Unpunished Massacre

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A ceremony honoring those killed in the Friday of Dignity massacre in Sanaa, Yemen, on March 18, 2011, held one week later at the site of the killings. The text on the posters contains a prayer and names of the dead.

Summary

On March 18, 2011, as popular revolts swept the Arab world, tens
of thousands of demonstrators in Yemen held a protest that they proclaimed the
Friday of Dignity. The biggest rally took place at Change Square, a sprawling
protest camp in the capital, Sanaa. As the protesters finished their midday
prayer, dozens of men wearing civilian clothes and armed with military assault
rifles converged on the rally from the south and opened fire.

“They were shooting at us directly, some from
the rooftops,” said Jabir Saad Ali Jabir al-Mandaliq, a protester who was paralyzed from
the waist down from one of the bullets. “I thought it was the end. I
began praying to Allah, ‘There is no God but God…’ The next
thing I knew I was shot.”

The Friday of Dignity massacre proved to be the deadliest
attack on demonstrators of Yemen’s yearlong uprising. Over the
course of three hours, the gunmen killed at least 45 protesters—most of
them university students and three of them children— and wounded 200
while state security forces made no serious effort to stop the carnage. Outrage
over the killings added further momentum to the protests, which in February
2012 forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh from office.

But there is no guarantee that justice will be served for
these killings. Instead, Yemen’s transition government is basing its
prosecution of the case on a deeply flawed investigation by Saleh
administration. Rather than bringing the change that protesters died for, the
proceedings could perpetuate the impunity of the past.

Human Rights Watch found that several senior former and
current government officials appear to have played a role in the massacre but
have not been charged. A trial against the alleged killers began in September
2012 but ground to a halt after lawyers for the victims sought top
officials’ indictments. In addition, then-President Saleh dismissed
Attorney General Abdullah al-Ulofy six weeks after the shootings when al-Ulofy demanded
that primary suspects, including government officials, be brought in for questioning.

Of the 78 defendants indicted for the killings, more than
half remain at large and are being tried in absentia by the First
Instance Court for the Western Capital District of Sanaa. Lawyers for the
victims allege that the authorities have made no effort to find them, despite
repeated orders to do so by the trial judge. The two alleged masterminds, both
sons of a pro-Saleh governor and ranking members of the state security
apparatus, are among the fugitives from justice. Even the minister of justice
concluded on the first anniversary of the shootings that “the real
perpetrators escaped and only their accomplices and supporters are in
jail.”

This report is based on more than 60 interviews with
witnesses, victims of the shooting, lawyers, government officials, human rights
defenders, and journalists. Human Rights Watch also reviewed the court file on
the case, as well as more than 20 video clips and dozens of media reports on
the killings. We monitored all sessions of the Friday of Dignity trial that had
taken place at this writing.

Among Human Rights Watch’s key findings:

The Central Security Forces, a paramilitary unit led at
the time by President Saleh’s nephew, Brig. Gen. Yahya Saleh,
received repeated warnings from security officials and residents of an
impending bloodbath in the days and hours before the attack, as well as
repeated calls for help once the shootings began. Yet the night before the
attack, the Central Security Forces withdrew from the streets where the
shootings took place. They returned to the scene a half-hour after
the attack began, after the worst of the shooting ended, and at that point
shielded the gunmen from the protesters.

Prosecutors for the Public Prosecution’s Northern
District, which carried out the investigation, failed to interview, much
less charge, several ranking government officials whom witnesses
implicated in the attack. They include Brig. Gen. Yahya Saleh—whom
President Hadi removed as chief the CSF in December 2012, but without
disciplinary proceedings—as well as then-Interior Minister Mutahar
al-Masri, and Mahweet Governor Ahmad Ali al-Ahwal, an appointee and
political ally of then-President Saleh.

Forty-three of the 78 suspects whom prosecutors indicted
in June 2011 in connection with the attack are listed as fugitives
from justice—31 were never apprehended, prosecutors say, and another
12 disappeared after they were provisionally released pending the outcome
of the trial. The missing defendants include the sons of Mahweet Governor
al-Ahwal—Col. Ali al-Ahwal, who directed the investigations unit of
the Central Investigations Division, Yemen’s criminal investigative
agency; and Ghazi al-Ahwal, security chief of Aden, Yemen’s busiest
port and a center of resistance to the central government.

Of the eight defendants detained for the shootings, many
appear to be peripheral accomplices at most. They include a 65-year-old
garbage collector and a visually impaired homeless man. (In addition to
the eight detainees and 43 alleged fugitives from justice, 27 defendants
were released on bail or their own recognizance; they have continued to
appear at trial sessions.)

The Friday of Dignity killings marked a turning point in the
movement to end the 33-year rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, prompting dozens
of government officials and diplomats to defect to the side of the
demonstrators. The massacre’s brazenness and high death toll made it a
symbol of the brutal response to Yemen’s uprising, in which government
forces and pro-government assailants, often acting in concert, killed at least
270 protesters and wounded thousands of others in the 12 months before Saleh
ceded power. Protesters later named the site of the attack Martyr’s
Square and turned it into a shrine, adorned with portraits of the dead.

The massacre appeared to have been planned. In the preceding
days, armed gangs and local residents had built several walls at the southern
edge of Change Square to keep back the protesters, and amassed sacks of bullets
in buildings used for the shootings. As demonstrators were finishing their
prayer, the assailants lit a fire along the thickest and tallest wall, trapping
the protesters’ main escape route and creating meters-high clouds of
smoke that partially obscured the gunmen. Many of the shooters had masked
their faces with headscarves in an apparent effort to conceal their identities.
All the dead and many of the wounded were shot in the head and upper body,
suggesting the gunmen were trained sharpshooters who aimed to kill.

President Hadi has promised sweeping reforms and
accountability for the abuses of the past, including those committed during the
2011 uprising.

In an interview with Human Rights Watch, the replacement
attorney general, Ali Ahmad Nasser al-Awash, denied any meddling by government
officials. Brigadier General Saleh, the former president Saleh’s nephew
and at the time of the attack the chief of the Central Security Forces, also
denied any wrongdoing by his forces, which have been implicated in
numerous assaults on protesters during the uprising. Brigadier General
Saleh said his anti-riot forces could not stop the shooting because they were
armed only with batons. He, like the former president, accused the protesters
of being armed.

Human Rights Watch’s investigation found that
protesters were not armed although many hurled rocks at the gunmen who fired on
them. Protesters also tore down the wall and stormed Governor al-Ahwal’s
home and other buildings from which the gunmen were shooting, even as the
gunfire continued. They raided the governor’s home, set it on fire, and
brutally beat some of the suspected gunmen.

Those protesters responsible for beating suspected
pro-government gunmen also should be investigated.

Efforts to prosecute those responsible for the Friday of
Dignity attack are complicated by a sweeping immunity law that the Yemeni
parliament passed in January 2012 in exchange for former president Saleh’s
resignation. The law grants the former president complete amnesty and all those
who served with him immunity from prosecution for all crimes except acts of
terrorism committed during his presidency.

In October 2012, lawyers for the Friday of Dignity victims
filed a motion in court that asks the trial judge to seek the indictment of at
least 11 additional government officials for the shootings, including former
president Saleh, former Interior Minister al-Masri, and Brig. Gen. Yahya Saleh.
On November 28, the trial judge in the case sent the motion to the
constitutional division of the Supreme Court requesting an interpretation of
its validity in light of the immunity law. At this writing, the Supreme Court
panel had not issued its decision, and until it does the trial is for all
practical purposes suspended.

A court challenge in Yemen is one of three paths to
prosecution of any officials who may be shielded by the immunity provision. A
second route would be for authorities in another
country to prosecute any suspects within their jurisdiction. Courts abroad are
not bound by amnesties issued in Yemen, and certain serious human rights offenses,
such as crimes against humanity, may be subject to universal jurisdiction,
meaning they can be tried by courts wherever the domestic law permits.

A third option is for
Yemen’s transition government to accept the jurisdiction of the
International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for crimes against humanity and
war crimes committed during the uprising. Yemen is not a party to the ICC, but
it could accept the court’s retroactive jurisdiction through a formal
declaration. The United Nations Security Council also has the authority to
refer situations to the ICC for consideration.

In September, transition
President Hadi ordered the creation of an independent and impartial commission
of inquiry to investigate human rights violations during the 2011 uprising,
including the Friday of Dignity attack. The commission is to adhere to
international standards and recommend measures for accountability and
compensation to victims.

Six months earlier, on
the eve of the first anniversary of the Friday of Dignity attack, President
Hadi had ordered compensation for victims of all attacks during the uprising. A
committee overseeing the fund would provide monthly stipends equivalent to a
soldier’s salary — about 20,000 Yemeni Rials, or US$93—to
those severely disabled and families of those killed, and to pay for medical
care for those severely injured, either at home or abroad.

At this writing, the fund had not been created. A group aiding the victims said that the government had separately allocated each of the seriously wounded and the families of the dead between 360,000 and 1 million Yemeni Rials (US$1682 to US$4,672), but at this writing the group had not finished distributing the funds.

While President Hadi’s decrees are important first steps
toward truth-finding and redress, a commission of inquiry and compensation should
not be seen as substitutes for criminal prosecutions. Survivors and relatives
of the victims are entitled to accountability as well.

They include survivors such as Salim al-Harazi, who was only
11 years old when he slipped away from home to join the Friday of Dignity rally
and lost both eyes after a bullet struck his face. “The former president
said he would protect the protesters,” Salim, who was 13 at this writing,
told Human Rights Watch. “So I thought I would be safe.”

They include victims’ relatives such as Zainab Ahmad Muhammad
Saleh, whose son Abdullah al-Shurmani joined the Friday of Dignity rally to
demand government support for education and a job, and instead received a fatal
bullet in his chest. Al-Shurmani’s mother told Human Rights Watch:

They trapped the young people with
walls so they could not escape the assassins. And then they killed them, these
men in full bloom of youth. We want a fair trial. Compensation is not enough.

Yemeni authorities should reopen the criminal investigation
into the Friday of Dignity massacre and ensure that the probe is credible and
impartial and meets international standards. They should devote adequate resources and effort to promptly
apprehending the defendants listed as fugitives and ensure all those responsible
are brought to justice, notwithstanding the immunity law.

Concerned countries, including the United States and member
states of the European Union and Gulf Cooperation Council, as well as the UN
Security Council, should publicly oppose the immunity law, and impose travel
bans and asset freezes on any Yemeni officials responsible for the serious
violations associated with the Friday of Dignity attack and other major crimes
during the 2011 uprising. They should refuse assistance to any security forces
implicated in these crimes until those responsible are removed from the ranks
and held to account.

Concerned governments also should support a resolution at
the Human Rights Council to create an international investigation into the
Friday of Dignity attacks and other serious rights violations during the 2011
Yemeni uprising should Yemeni efforts fall short.

These attacks should not go unpunished if there is to be a genuine
break from the abuses of the past in Yemen.

Recommendations

To
the Government of Yemen

Reopen the Public Prosecution
investigation into the Friday of Dignity attack of March 18, 2011 to
ensure all those implicated, regardless of position or rank, are arrested
and appropriately prosecuted. Ensure that the new investigation is independent,
impartial and meets international standards.

Devote adequate resources
and effort to promptly apprehending the
43 defendants in the case who are listed as fugitives from justice.
Take appropriate legal action against those obstructing justice by
assisting fugitives.

Promptly create the independent commission ordered
through presidential decree in September 2012 to conduct a transparent and
independent investigation, in accordance with relevant international standards,
into serious human rights violations during the 2011 uprising. The
commission’s findings should form the basis for investigations and
criminal prosecutions as appropriate.

Promptly establish
a fund for reparations, including compensation and rehabilitation, for the
wounded and families of the dead in the Friday of Dignity attack and other
attacks during the 2011 uprising in accordance with international
standards. Ensure that payments are appropriate to the harm inflicted.

Comply with international obligations prohibiting
immunity from prosecution for those responsible for serious human rights
violations.

Ratify the Rome
Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Accept through a formal
declaration the jurisdiction of the ICC retroactive to at least January
2011 to allow for the possibility of an investigation into alleged crimes
within the jurisdiction of the ICC since the beginning of the protest
movement.

Ensure that when
responding to protests security forces act in accordance with the UN Code
of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and the UN Basic Principles on
the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, exercising
restraint in the use of force and taking measures to prevent the outbreak
of violence.

Respect and protect
the rights of all persons to peaceful assembly, freedom of expression, and
freedom of association. Any limitation on these rights should have a clear
basis in law, be for a legitimate and specific reason, and be narrowly
restricted to what is necessary to meet the aim.

To
the UN Security Council, Gulf Cooperation Council, European Union, United
States, and Other Concerned Countries

Publicly oppose
immunity for Yemeni officials implicated in serious violations of
international human rights law or international humanitarian law. Make
clear that such immunity has no effect in jurisdictions outside of Yemen.

Impose an asset
freeze and travel ban on current and former officials implicated in the
Friday of Dignity attack and other serious human rights violations until
perpetrators are fully and appropriately held to account and victims
receive adequate redress.

To donor
countries: Suspend all security assistance, including sales of weapons,
ammunition, and equipment, to any Yemeni security units implicated in the
Friday of Dignity attack and other serious human rights violations, until
officials implicated in those crimes are removed from duty and held to
account.

Support
Yemen’s efforts to conduct independent, impartial, and transparent
investigations into serious violations of international human rights law
and international humanitarian law in Yemen during the 2011 uprising.
Should these efforts fail, publicly support an independent international
investigation into these violations.

To
the UN Human Rights Council

Maintain monitoring of the Yemeni
government’s investigations and prosecutions of serious violations
of international human rights law and international humanitarian law by
all sides during the 2011 uprising and in previous years.

Recommend an explicit timeline for the government
of Yemen to carry out transparent and independent investigations that
adhere to international standards into past violations. Take measures to
ensure accountability, including establishing an independent international
investigation, should Yemen’s national investigations fail to meet
this timeline.

Methodology

This report is based on field research conducted by Human
Rights Watch in Yemen between February 2011 and November 2012. It examines
violations of human rights during the so-called Friday of Dignity attack that
killed at least 45 protesters and wounded some 200 others on March 18, 2011 in
Sanaa.

A Human Rights Watch researcher and four consultants interviewed
more than 60 people in Sanaa, many on multiple occasions, and carried out dozens
of follow-up interviews by email and telephone from Sanaa and New York. Interviewees
included participants in the protest, the wounded and relatives of the dead, defendants,
medical workers, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists, political analysts,
and government officials.

We contacted witnesses, defendants, survivors, and
victims’ relatives through local non-governmental organizations or
lawyers for victims or suspects. We carried out interviews in English or in
Arabic through Yemeni translators. Most people were interviewed individually.
The interviewees were informed of the purpose of our research and were not paid
or given other incentives to speak with us.

We reviewed the prosecution’s criminal case against 78
alleged perpetrators, which includes nearly 1,000 pages of testimony and legal
motions filed by defense and prosecution lawyers. We also reviewed more than 20
video clips and two documentaries about the shootings, as well as media reports
from international and Yemeni sources, including those reflecting the views of
the government and the political opposition. We confirmed the identities of the
dead, as well as their cause of death, with medical officials.

Human Rights Watch was not granted official visas to Yemen
until 11 months after the attack. A Human Rights Watch consultant witnessed the
attack. After receiving a visa, a Human Rights Watch researcher visited the
scene in order to verify information from witnesses and court documents, such
as the locations of the shooters and protesters.

In December 2012, Human Rights Watch sent Yemeni government officials a detailed letter requesting responses to our findings. Despite repeated follow-up queries, we did not receive a reply before the first printing of this report. In February 2013, the Foreign Ministry, Interior Ministry and Public Prosecution gave Human Rights Watch brief written statements that they could not comment on an open court case but that authorities would act “in accordance with the law.”

I. Background

Yemen is among the poorest countries in the world, with
more than 40 percent of its 24 million people living below the poverty line.[1]
The country is running out of water as well as oil, one of its few sources of
foreign exchange and state revenue.[2]
Several tribal areas serve as bases for the armed group Al-Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula.[3]

Yemen was two separate
countries until 1990. In 1962, an army coup ended centuries of rule by a Zaidi
imamate, establishing the Yemen Arab Republic (YAR, or North Yemen). In 1967,
the British protectorate known as the Federation of South Arabia achieved
independence as the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY, or South
Yemen).

The leaders of North and South Yemen declared unity on May
22, 1990. Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of North Yemen since 1978, assumed the
presidency of the newly created Republic of Yemen.[4]
Political tensions led to a two-month civil war in 1994 that Saleh’s
forces won.[5] In 2007,
southerners, saying their economic and political grievances remained
unaddressed, escalated a campaign for autonomy or separation.[6]
From 2004 to 2010 in the northern governorate of Sa’da, government forces
fought six rounds of armed conflict with rebels known as Huthis, who accused
the government of political and religious discrimination.[7]

Popular discontent, already rising in response to widespread
joblessness and rampant government corruption, soared in late 2010 after
President Saleh proposed to amend electoral laws and the constitution so he
could stand for reelection when his seventh term expired in 2013.[8]
In January 2011, inspired by mass protests in Tunisia and Egypt, thousands of
Yemenis took to the streets seeking to end President Saleh’s 33-year
rule.

By February, the numbers of protesters had swelled to
hundreds of thousands. Government forces—primarily the Central Security
Forces (CSF) and Republican Guard, run at the time by the president’s
nephew and son respectively—and pro-government gangs responded to the
largely peaceful protests with excessive and lethal force, particularly in the
capital, Sanaa, as well as Aden and Taizz.

Human Rights Watch has confirmed the deaths of 270
protesters and bystanders from February through December 2011 in attacks by
Yemeni security forces and pro-government assailants during anti-Saleh demonstrations.
Thousands were injured.[9]

Even as the protests remained overwhelmingly peaceful, armed
clashes erupted in May 2011 between government forces and the opposition
fighters of Yemeni elites vying for power. Those clashes rose to the level of a
non-international armed conflict in which scores more civilians were killed,
many in what appeared to be indiscriminate attacks in violation of
international humanitarian law (the laws of war).[10]

On November 23, amid
mounting domestic and international pressure to leave office, Saleh signed an
accord brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and backed in most
aspects by the United Nations Security Council, the United States, and the
European Union, to transfer power to Vice President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi over
a three-month period.[11] In exchange, the accord promised Saleh and his
aides immunity from prosecution for crimes during his presidency.[12] Membership in a national unity cabinet was split
evenly between Saleh’s General People’s Congress (GPC) party and
its allies and the political opposition.

On January 21, 2012, Yemen’s parliament granted full
immunity to Saleh and immunity from prosecution for any “political”
crimes, with the exception of terrorist acts, to “those who worked”
with him during his 33 years in office—language that is sweepingly
broad. The immunity law violates Yemen’s international legal
obligations to prosecute those responsible for serious human rights violations.[13]

On February 21, Yemenis voted to appoint Hadi, the sole
candidate, as a two-year interim president.[14]

Under a UN-facilitated “Implementing Mechanism” that
serves as a transition blueprint, Hadi’s government is to bring security
forces—including those run by former president Saleh’s
relatives—under civilian command, pass a transitional justice law, draft
a new constitution, reform the electoral and judicial systems, and hold general
elections in 2014. The government is also to convene a national dialogue
conference to address grievances by groups including the northern Huthi rebels
and the southerners.[15]

Loyalists of former president Saleh, who remains in Yemen as
head of the GPC, have resisted transition measures, sometimes with violence. In
June 2012, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2051, threatening
sanctions against those undermining the transition.[16]

In December 2012, President Hadi removed Brig. Gen. Yahya
Saleh, the former president’s nephew, from his position as chief of the
Central Security Forces. He also abolished the Republican Guard and removed
Brig. Gen. Ahmad Ali Saleh, the former president’s son, as commander of
that unit.

At the same time, President Hadi abolished the powerful
First Armored Division and removed the division’s commander, Gen. Ali
Mohsen al-Ahmar.[17]
General al-Ahmar had defected with his troops to the side of the protesters
following the March 18, 2011 attack described in this report.He is a longtime rival of Gen. Ahmad Ali
Saleh and is closely aligned with the Yemeni Congregation for Reform, the
country’s largest opposition party, which is commonly referred to as
Islah. However Hadi was expected to offer both Brig. Gen. Ahmad Ali Saleh
and Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar new military positions.[18]

II. Mounting Violence before the
Friday of Dignity Attack

The Friday of Dignity attack did not take place in a vacuum.
Across Yemen in the weeks and days preceding the massacre, security forces and
pro-government gangs repeatedly attacked the fledgling protest movement.[19]

The most violent attacks in Sanaa took place at Change
Square, a sprawling tent city that the protesters created in February 2011
outside the gates of Sanaa University, in the west of the capital. Change
Square became the center of the movement against President Saleh—a
burgeoning city within a city complete with vendors, a stage for speeches and
entertainment, a makeshift hospital inside a mosque and volunteer lawyers and
security forces. It rapidly expanded south into a mixed residential and
commercial area. The expansion created splits in the neighborhood, with many
residents and merchants welcoming the protesters and others describing their
neighborhood as under siege.

Some residents, including several government officials and
security chiefs, formed armed vigilante groups and commissioned the
construction of brick walls to cordon off the protest camp. The tallest
and thickest of these walls became the scene of the Friday of Dignity attack.

Security Forces Assist
Pro-Government Gangs

State security forces
carried out several attacks on largely peaceful protests and facilitated other
attacks by armed gangs believed to be Saleh loyalists or mercenaries, even
driving them to Change Square in military trucks or supplying them with rocks
and sticks.[20] Saleh supporters also reportedly paid gang
members, whom they sheltered in a rival tent city in Sanaa’s Tahrir
Square.[21]The security forces most frequently involved in
the attacks were the CSF, a paramilitary unit led by Saleh’s nephew,
Brig. Gen. Yahya Saleh, and the elite Republican Guard, led by Saleh’s
son, Brig. Gen. Ahmed Ali Saleh. (As previously noted, President Hadi removed
both Yahya and Ahmad Saleh from their posts in December 2012).[22]

The attacks turned deadly in mid-February, with security
forces and unknown assailants killing six protesters in the flashpoint cities
of Aden and Taizz between February 11 and February 18. The attackers wounded
more than 100 others during that period, many in Sanaa.[23]
Protests in cities across Yemen on February 18, named the Day of Rage, drew an
estimated 20,000 people.[24]

In early March in Sanaa, local elders and other residents
began meeting to discuss ways to “stop the expansion” of the Change
Square protest camp, according to testimony from local university student Nasr
al-Bawni:

We
decided that each family would guard their section of the neighborhood,
especially side streets. However protesters continued to expand their
area. … [On March 11, the Friday before the attack] Central Security
Force members created a human wall to stop them, and we created a sign asking
them to not expand further.[25]

Musa al-Nimrani, a spokesperson for the National
Organization for the Defense of Rights and Freedom (HOOD), an Islah-affiliated
human rights group that supported the protests, told Yemeni media that day that
balatija—a word meaning thugs that Yemenis use to refer to armed
men loyal to Saleh—had been gathering on rooftops at al-Qadisiyah intersection,
at what was then the southern edge of the protest camp, to prevent its further
expansion. “They will do everything they can to remove
protesters,” al-Nimrani was quoted as telling the news agency NewsYemen.[26]

Al-Nimrani described Col. Ali Ahmad Ali Mohsen al-Ahwal, the
director of investigations at the Ministry of Interior’s Criminal
Investigation Division (CID) and the son of the governor of Mahweet, a province
northwest of Sanaa, as the balatija ringleader.[27]

During the week before
the attack, CSF members openly mingled with balatija in the area where
the wall that became the scene of the Friday of Dignity attack was built,
reporter Laura Kasinof, who was covering the uprising for The New York
Times, told Human Rights Watch.[28]

President Saleh’s vow on March 10 to hold a referendum
on early elections and constitutional reforms failed to stem the protests.[29]
The following day, tens of thousands of demonstrators held another massive
rally they called the “Friday of No Return” and continued to expand
the protest camp’s perimeter.[30]

Before dawn on March 12, CSF and the Republican Guard forces
surrounded Change Square with armored vehicles and fired live ammunition and
teargas to try to stop the camp’s expansion, witnesses told Human Rights
Watch.[31] The
attack killed four demonstrators including a 15-year-old boy who was shot in
the head, according to media reports.[32] The
Reuters news agency quoted doctors at the site as saying police blocked medical
teams from entering the area.[33]

That night and the following
week, the state-run Yemen TV and Saba TV channels broadcast interviews with
residents who expressed anger over the expansion of the protest camp.[34]

By then, Change Square extended about a kilometer south from
the Sanaa University’s southern gates along the busy thoroughfare of Ring
Road, as well as a few hundred meters down nearby side streets. At least 5,000
protesters were living in tents in the camp and their numbers swelled to tens
of thousands during Friday protests.

On March 13, at least four gunmen fired live ammunition into
Change Square from nearby rooftops.[35]
Protesters and armed men threw rocks at each other following the shootings,
according to Yemeni bloggers and activists.[36]

Government Officials Help Build
Wall

On March 14, elders and other residents of the neighborhood again
met to discuss the encroachment of Change Square, according to the testimony of
local zone leader and GPC member Aqil al-Bawni.[37]The group met at the
home of Abdullah Farwan, then-president of the Judicial Inspection Authority, a
powerful agency within the Ministry of Justice. Other ranking officials at the
gathering included Ahmad Ahmad Nasser, a district director-general of the
Political Security Organization, an intelligence agency that reported directly
to President Saleh and whose de-facto head at the time was Saleh’s nephew
Ammar Saleh; and Col. Abd al-Rahman al-Dili’l of the Yemen Air Force.
Local council member Abd al-Rahman al-Kuhlani also participated, Aqil al-Bawni
said.[38]

During the meeting, al-Bawni said, the ranking officials
ordered the elders to expand the popular committees to ward off the protesters:

To my
surprise, they asked us to create popular committees, everyone guarding his own
entrance, to face any problems that might arise. And since I am the local chief
I was assigned to assemble the youth in the neighborhood and tell them to
protect the area. They asked me to bring the youth to the hall and I
did. I also informed members of the General Security [regular police
force] in the area . . . and they all came to the meeting.”[39]

Participants in the meeting decided to build a brick wall to
block the protest camp’s further growth, the local chief testified.[40]
Residents had over the previous two weeks built several brick walls across side
roads to keep out protesters, but the one built following the March 14 meeting
was the sturdiest and stretched across Ring Road.

Farwan, the head of judicial inspection, contributed 300
bricks to build the wall and Ali al-Ahwal, the son of
the governor of Mahweet, provided the cement, al-Bawni said.[41] Ali al-Ahwal later became the leading defendant in
the government’s case against the alleged attackers.

Yahya Abdullah al-Amrani, an officer in the CSF, told
prosecutors that those who commissioned the wall included the governor of Mahweet,
Ahmad Ali al-Ahwal, whose nickname is al-Baidani.[42]
In the week before the Friday of Dignity attack on March 18, the witness said, the
governor and his guards had “shot in the air” to keep protesters
from expanding their camp toward his home. Al-Amrani added: “Al-Baidani
swore that the wall will not be destroyed even if it is the end of him.”[43]

Muhammad al-Sanabani, a private security guard who was later
charged with helping set fire to the wall after attackers and local residents
lined the south side of the wall with tires and doused them with petrol, also
testified that Governor al-Ahwal was involved in the construction of the
wall and the use of live ammunition to fend off the protesters:

Throughout the week, as residents were
meeting to discuss the wall that was built in order to prevent protesters from
expanding, the governor of Mahweet, Ahmad Ali Mohsen al-Baidani [al-Ahwal]
stated that gunshots should be fired in the direction of the wall to prevent
protesters from breaking the wall.[44]

Residents testified that local resident Bashir al-Nimri, a
defendant listed as a fugitive, collected money for the wall’s
construction and also distributed small payments for qat, a leaf widely
chewed as a stimulant in Yemen, to encourage men to join the vigilante groups.

“Some people were getting between 500 and 1,000 Yemeni
Rials [US$2.33 to US$6.66] for qat, and this was distributed by Bashir al-Nimri,”
al-Sanabani testified to prosecutors.[45]

The wall was about 2.5 meters high. It crossed Ring Road at
its intersection with a clinic called the Iranian Medical Center.[46]

On March 14, the Yemeni authorities expelled four freelance
journalists writing for major Western media who had reported on attacks by
government forces on demonstrators.[47]Combined with a
government freeze on most visas for journalists, and mounting attacks by both
government security forces and pro-government gangs on Yemeni and regional
media, the expulsions decreased the already small international media corps and
further isolated Yemen’s uprising from the rest of the world.[48]

On March 15, Yemeni authorities announced a security shuffle
in three provinces that included the appointment of Ghazi Ahmad Ali Mohsen al-Ahwal,
another son of the Mahweet governor, as director of security for Aden, the
strategic southern port city and the seat of a southern separatist movement.[49]
Ghazi al-Ahwal later became the second leading defendant in the Friday of
Dignity attack and, like his brother Ali, was charged with shooting with intent
to kill.

Aden had become a flashpoint in the preceding weeks and
months, with state security forces using disproportionate, and at times lethal,
force against both anti-Saleh protesters and southern separatists who were
starting to coalesce.[50] Ghazi
al-Ahwal had previously been the director of security in al-Dali, another
restive southern province near Aden.

On March 16, government security forces fired live
ammunition and teargas at largely peaceful protests in Sanaa as well in the
cities of Taizz and Hudaida, reportedly wounding more than 150.[51]

On March 17, three witnesses told Human Rights Watch, balatija
walked freely in the area of the new wall in Sanaa. Some were armed with
AK-47 military assault rifles, batons and metal rods, according to Khaled Raja,
a cameraman with the opposition Suhail TV channel.[52]

That night, witnesses including security officials testified,
tensions were high in the neighborhood near the wall. Yet, as detailed below,
instead of taking measures to avert further violence, security forces withdrew
from the immediate area.

III. The Attack

The Friday of Dignity massacre, in which gunmen in
civilian clothing opened fire with military assault rifles on a largely
peaceful protest rally, was the single deadliest attack on demonstrators of
Yemen’s 2011 uprising. The attack killed at least 45 protesters—three
of them juveniles—and wounded up to 200 others, many of them
seriously. It marked a turning point in the movement against President
Saleh, prompting the defection of dozens of government officials and diplomats,
and assumed symbolic importance within the protest movement because of the
brazen character of the shootings and the high death toll.

Hours after the attack, President Saleh declared a 30-day
state of emergency.[53] He and
Interior Minister al-Masri blamed “armed” protesters for the bloodshed—a
charge the president repeated the following week.[54]

Witness testimonies and multiple interviews conducted by
Human Rights Watch tell a different story: unarmed protesters were finishing
their midday prayer when gunmen opened fire on them from rooftops and nearby
streets. After the gunmen shot at them, protesters threw stones at the gunmen,
and caught and beat several suspected attackers.

“Protect Your Homes!”

The attack was carefully planned.[55]
Gunmen began assembling in the area of the attack after midnight on March 18,
2011. At that time, at least 15 armed men, about 10 of them from Mahweet
governorate, entered the Sanaa house of Mahweet’s governor on Ring Road,
about 30 meters south of the new wall, according to testimony of one of the
governor’s neighbors.[56]

Map of Sanaa Protest Area

By morning, local residents and balatija had placed
tires along the south side of the wall. Abdullah Muhammad al-Judubi, a
24-year-old employee of a printing company, was among several witnesses who
described Ali al-Ahwal as playing a leading role in preparing to set fire to
the wall:

I passed by my store to check up on
things and found a large tire underneath a billboard, and I was worried it
would catch fire. So I told Ali Ahmad al-Baidani [al-Ahwal] and the other one
beside him to remove it. He said, “Don’t worry, if it gets burned
it is my responsibility.”[57]

At approximately 11:30 a.m., a man drove through the
neighborhood in a taxi, shouting through a megaphone such warnings as:
“People of the neighborhood, protect your homes!”[58] Zone leader Aqil
al-Bawni, who gave a similar account, identified the man with the megaphone as
neighborhood council member Abd al-Jalil al-Sanabani.[59]
Al-Sanabani was subsequently charged connection with the attack and at this
writing was listed as fugitive from justice.[60]

At around noon, thousands of protesters gathered for midday
prayer, packing Ring Road from the beginning of Change Square to the north side
of the wall. On the south side, local residents
“were all over the area behind the wall to protect the neighborhoods
because they assumed the protesters would try to enter from side streets,” university student Nasr al-Bawni testified.[61]

A helicopter flew over Change Square shortly before the
shootings.[62] A
Human Rights Watch weapons analyst identified the aircraft in the video as a
Soviet-design Mi-17 transport helicopter configured as a gunship, but without
weapons. Only the Air Force is known to possess such helicopters in Yemen. At
the time of the attack it was commanded by President Saleh’s
half-brother, Gen. Muhammad Saleh.[63]

“The helicopter was definitely flying over the square.
It was not there by coincidence,” said Kasinof, The New York Times
reporter who was at the scene. “We hadn’t seen that happen
before.”[64]

At around 12:30 p.m., during the Friday prayer sermon,
“the balatija started trying to provoke us by cursing at us and
calling us names,” Khaled Raja, a reporter for the opposition Suhail TV,
told Human Rights Watch. Scuffles broke out between the two sides on one edge
of the prayer area near the wall, he said.[65]

Raja said he saw men armed with guns in trees, on rooftops
and behind sandbags near the wall: “They were positioning themselves as
if something was going to happen.”[66]

A Shower of Bullets

At approximately 1:15 p.m., as protesters were finishing
their prayer, men on the south side of the wall set fire to the tires beside
the wall, according to the indictment and witness testimony. Abd al-Karim
Saleh Awadh al-Yafii, who worked at a furniture store near the wall, told
prosecutors:

Some men in civilian clothes . . .
doused the tires with petrol then set them on fire, and threw stones at
protesters who were praying behind the wall. After the tires were on fire
there was a lot of smoke, approximately three meters high, and the fire was as
high as the wall.[67]

Al-Yafii said that the men setting fire to the wall were
from the GPC but did not explain how he knew this.

Once they were partially obscured by smoke, gunmen—many
with headscarves wrapped around their faces—began firing into the air
from rooftops of residential and commercial buildings on Ring Road on the
southern side of the wall, according to numerous witnesses.Protesters
on the northern side of the wall were chanting “We are peaceful!”
But some began throwing stones.[68]

Much of the shooting came from the Mahweet governor’s
house.[69] Ali
Ismail al-Mutawakel, a carpenter at a furniture store located in front of the
governor’s house, said he saw three guards from al-Ahwal’s family
on the governor’s rooftop shooting in the air.[70]
Witness Abd al-Karim al-Yafii testified that he saw Ali Ahmad al-Ahwal,
the CID investigations director and governor’s son, shooting as well:[71]

The son of the governor named Ali
Ahmad was carrying an a’ali [assault rifle] and next to him were
four of their guards, some were carrying sniper rifles and some were carrying
an a’ali. … They were shooting live rounds from the rooftop
of the governor’s house that faced the protesters.

Witnesses said they saw three groups of gunmen move toward
the wall. One witness, Walid Hussein Hassan al-Nimri, said local residents
identified the gunmen as members of three local gangs:

I saw smoke and heard gun shots.
Then I saw three groups of armed men covering their faces. Some had small guns,
others had AK-47s…They moved toward the wall and started firing at
protesters.[72]

The indictment states that “The fact that these three
gangs were present at the same time signifies cooperation with Ali Ahmad al-Ahwal
in attacking the protesters present on Ring Road.”[73]

A witness also testified that an officer in the First
Armored Division, Maj. Abdullah al-Mikhlafi, led a group of gunmen who fired at
protesters from atop a honey store near the wall.[74]

Raja, the Suhail TV cameraman, climbed up a utility pole and
saw protesters tearing down the wall. At that point, he said, the killings
started:

The protesters were chanting,
“The people want the downfall of the regime!” …
The youths started tearing holes in the wall with their bare hands, and the
gunmen started to fire directly at the protesters. There was a shower of
bullets. I think I was targeted; whenever I moved from left to right, bullets
followed me.

At one point as I moved a man stopped
to talk to me and he was hit by a bullet in the chest. I don’t know if he
lived. We both fell to the ground. Many people were falling. I didn’t
know whether to cry or to keep filming.[75]

Abd al-Rashid al-Faqih, a human rights activist who at the
time was a consultant with Human Rights Watch, rushed to the scene from his
nearby home and watched the shootings unfold from a doorway about five
buildings north of the wall. He told Human Rights Watch:

The bullets were falling on the
protesters like a rain shower. I could see them hit walls and doors. In areas
where the smoke cleared I could see gunmen on a roof shooting randomly at
protesters. A child was walking toward the wall with a relative, perhaps his
father. I told the man, “Don’t walk that way.” A short while
later I saw him carrying back the child, who had been shot. I saw many people
die.[76]

Some protesters began a grim shuttle service, transporting
bodies to a clinic at Change Square in blankets and returning with the blankets
filled with stones to throw at the gunmen.[77]

Khahil Qaed Muhammad al-Mulaiki, vice-principal of a private
school, had been praying near the wall and pressed closer after seeing the
wounded being rushed to the clinic. En route, he spotted a friend, Ali al-Salahi,
a member of the Change Square security committee, standing near the wall.
Al-Mulaiki said:

On the way to the wall I saw him
[al-Salahi] alive. On the way back from the wall I saw him dead. It looked like
a big machine gun shot him. Later I saw footage from Suhail TV of the pool of
blood coming from his body and another protester putting his hands in that
blood and putting that blood on his chest. Ali al-Salahi was a newlywed. He had
just furnished an apartment for his new family but he never got to live in it.

Time and place lost all meaning.
All of us close to the wall we thought we’d be killed at any moment.[78]

Local resident Salim al-Aulaqi reached the wall shortly
after protesters had torn it down:

I could see a pool of blood in
front of the wall and several spots of blood and the remains of someone’s
brain. One of the youths was trying to collect pieces of a martyr’s skull
to bring back to the hospital.[79]

Mosque Filled with Dead and Dying

In a span of three hours, the gunmen killed at least 45
protesters and wounded some 200 others, according to medical officials at the
scene, victims’ relatives, and lawyers interviewed by Human Rights Watch.
Human Rights Watch believes the number of dead could be as high as 52 if those
who died over the following days from their injuries are included. The
prosecution’s indictment listed 43 protesters killed and another 127
wounded.[80]

All of those killed and at least 40 of the wounded were shot
with semi-automatic weapons in the head, chest, or other areas of the upper
body, in what medical officials and lawyers for the protesters described as the
work of trained marksmen who intended to kill.[81]

At that time, the field hospital at Change Square, located
inside a mosque, was little more than a makeshift clinic. Within minutes, medical
workers were overwhelmed by the carnage. Within a half-hour of the first
victims’ arrivals, the hospital was issuing urgent appeals for blood
donations. Doctors conducted 27 surgeries that afternoon, although the hospital
was equipped for no more than three at a time, a head nurse at the field
hospital told Human Rights Watch.[82]

British freelance journalist Tom Finn described the hospital
as “massively under-supplied”:

The whole mosque was filled with
the dead and the dying. There were children among the injured. A handful of
doctors were moving from case to case, trying to distinguish between people who
had been shot so severely they couldn’t be helped and those who could. They
had a decrepit old battered ambulance; the wheels were spinning in the mud.
You could hear the shooting from inside. It was very loud.[83]

Ibrahim Murfaq, a volunteer paramedic who was driving the
ambulance, said his team alone made more than 30 trips between the wounded and
the field hospital.[84]

Protesters Beat, Detain Suspected
Gunmen

After they tore down the
wall, waves of protesters crossed into the area from which the gunmen were
shooting and stormed the governor’s home and nearby buildings in search
of the attackers, even as the gunfire continued. The protesters raided the
governors’ building and set it on fire. They confiscated several assault
rifles and bags of ammunition from the buildings, according to witness
testimonies and interviews with Human Rights Watch.[85]

The protesters dragged at least 14 suspected gunmen from the
buildings and nearby streets, and beat some of them brutally. Sami al-Soofi, a
school teacher, described the scene at the Mahweet governor’s house:

The protesters were throwing
mattresses, blankets, even doors from the windows. They were enraged. I saw
protesters carry out Kalashnikovs [assault rifles] and flour sacks filled with
bullets. Then they brought down two balatija. They were beating them
hard.[86]

When protesters removed an alleged gunman from the
buildings, “they would beat him like it was a zaffa [a boisterous
wedding procession],” said al-Faqih, the human rights activist.
“Except that instead of clapping they were beating.”[87]

The protesters grabbed one alleged gunman, private security
guard Muhammad al-Sanabani, 26, from the front of his house on Ring Road.
Al-Sanabani described the beating to Human Rights Watch from a cage inside a
Sanaa courtroom while on trial for the attack:

The protesters beat me and put me
in a blanket and brought me to Change Square, beating me the whole way there. There
were so many people beating me I couldn’t count.[88]

The protesters told media that five of the alleged gunmen
were carrying government identity cards.[89]

The protesters brought at least 14 suspected gunmen to
Change Square, where they were detained and questioned by lawyers active inside
the protest camp. Muhammad Mehdi al-Bakoli, a lawyer with the House of Law
Organization (OHL), a group representing several defendants, said the
protesters beat some of his clients severely and detained them in squalid bathrooms
and unlicensed jails.[90]

Later that afternoon, the Change Square protesters turned
the suspected gunmen over to the headquarters of the First Armored Division of
the Yemeni army, about a kilometer away. The First Armored Division in turn
transferred the suspects to the custody of a military prosecutor.

The number of suspected gunmen detained at that time remains
in dispute. Lawyers for the protesters who were wounded or killed in the attack
say 14 suspects were brought to the First Armored Division.[91]
Documents from the Public Prosecution also refer to 14 suspects as detained, as
did the First Armored Division’s media office.[92]
The day after the attack, a government spokesman told media that 16 suspects
had been arrested.[93]

More recently, lawyers for the OHL asserted that the Change
Square protesters brought 28 suspects to the First Armored Division. Of those, the
First Armored Division transferred only 16 to a military prosecutor and the
whereabouts of the others remain unknown, the OHL lawyers said.[94]

One witness said that CID intelligence chief Ali al-Ahwal,
the Mahweet governor’s son and alleged ringleader of the attack, was
among the group of alleged gunmen who were transferred to the First Armored
Division. Ali al-Ahwal has not been seen since the day of the attack and is
listed by the prosecution as a fugitive from justice. The witness, Muhammad Abdullah
Daba’a, who was among the defendants transferred to the First Armored
Division, testified he saw Ali al-Ahwal around sunset the day of the attack:

They [protesters] were making
celebratory noises, saying the son of the governor arrived, the one who
shot. They called him a serial killer. I saw him and they referred
to him as the son of al-Baidani [Governor Ahmad Ali al-Ahwal] ... We remained
handcuffed [with rope] for about one hour, and then we were transferred to the
FAD [First Armored Division].[95]

Attorney General Ali Ahmad Nasser al-Awash, an appointee of President
Saleh, told Human Rights Watch that Ali al-Ahwal was never detained.[96]

Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, the First Armored Division’s
commander at the time of the attack, told Human Rights Watch that 14 suspects
were brought to the First Armored Division and that all had been turned over to
a military prosecutor there. The only suspects who were released, he said in a
reference to more than 30 defendants whom the prosecution has listed as
fugitives from justice, were let go “on the orders of [then-president]
Ali Abdullah Saleh.”[97]

A former Saleh confidant and one of the most powerful officials
in Yemen, General al-Ahmar defected to the opposition three days after the
Friday of Dignity attack and deployed his troops to protect the demonstrators
at Change Square, ostensibly to protest the March 18 shootings.[98]
General al-Ahmar is closely aligned with Islah. For more than a year
after Saleh agreed in November 2011 to resign, First Armored Division troops
guarded the house of President Hadi. Many Yemenis view General al-Ahmar as one
of the new president’s closest advisors.[99]

State of Emergency

When President Saleh declared a state of emergency the night
of the attack, he also banned the public from carrying weapons in the capital.[100]
Parliament five days later approved the state of emergency, which allowed media
censorship, barred street protests, and gave security forces sweeping powers to
arrest and detain suspects without judicial process.[101]The decree lapsed after
30 days.

The March 18 attack provoked a national and international
outcry and added further momentum—as well as elite support—to the protest
movement. Tens of thousands of Yemenis turned out for the funerals of slain
protesters. In addition to General al-Ahmar, dozens of Yemeni government
officials from Saleh’s GCP as well as opposition parties resigned in
protest; they included cabinet members, members of parliament, and diplomats
including Yemen’s chief envoy to the United Nations.[102]
Sadiq al-Ahmar (no relation to Gen. al-Ahmar), the head of the powerful Hashid
tribal confederation, also threw his support behind the opposition.[103]

Saleh rejected mounting calls for his resignation, deployed
tanks throughout the capital, and on March 20 dissolved his cabinet.[104]

IV. The Victims

Most of the 45 protesters killed in the Friday of Dignity
shootings were university students. The youngest was 16 years old—one of
three juveniles killed—and the oldest was 50. All of the dead and most of
the wounded were male. The dead include Jamal al-Sharaabi, a 35-year-old Yemeni
photographer, the first journalist killed in the Yemen uprising.[105]

All of those killed and at least 40 of the 200
wounded—10 of them children—were shot in the head, chest or other
areas of the upper body.[106]

Protesters named the area of the shootings Martyr’s
Square and turned it into a shine, adorned with portraits of the dead.
But that is nearly all the recognition the victims have received. To date, the
severely wounded and relatives of the dead have received almost no government
assistance, according to the survivors’ lawyers.[107]

The following are brief portraits of two protesters who were
killed and two who were wounded in the attack, based on Human Rights Watch
interviews with the wounded, witnesses, and relatives.

Salah Abdullah al-Shurmani

The third-floor apartment in Sanaa where Salah Abdullah
al-Shurmani lived with his family, located on a trash-strewn
street, is reached by a rickety, outdoor stairwell smelling of sewage and lit
at night only by a guide’s flashlight.

In contrast to the squalid exterior, the family’s
sitting room was a carefully arranged shrine to al-Shurmani’s memory,
filled with photos of him as a smiling, seemingly carefree youth. Even the
clock on the wall bore his likeness.

Al-Shurmani was 22 when he was killed in the Friday of
Dignity attack. He had hoped to attend a university, his relatives said. But
the family could not afford to send a potential breadwinner to school, so
instead he worked in his father’s tailor shop. When the uprising began,
said al-Shurmani’s mother, Zainab Ahmad Muhammad Saleh, her son joined
the weekly protests at Change Square:

My son went to protest because the
young people are fed up and they wanted change. The people cannot live well.
They cannot complete their education. The prices are sky-high. The people are
turning into street beggars … In Europe, they care for cats and dogs but
here the people eat garbage.[108]

The morning of the Friday of Dignity attack, al-Shurmani
told his mother he would be home for lunch, then headed off to Change Square.
His mother cooked him a big meal but the food grew cold and hours passed:

I called his brother Muhammad but
there was no answer. I stood on the roof and I could see the helicopters
circling in the area of Change Square. I was crying and praying to God to
protect the young men there. Finally around 5 p.m. Muhammad came home. He was in
tears. He said, “It’s Salah. He’s a martyr.”[109]

Muhammad al-Shurmani was also at Change Square that day.
Sometime after 2 p.m., he said, he got a call from friends who had been with
his brother, saying Salah had spotted him in the crowd and was crossing a
traffic circle to join him when a bullet pierced his chest. Muhammad ran to the
protesters’ field hospital at the mosque in Change Square:

At first I couldn’t get in
because the crowds were so big. Finally I entered the courtyard of the mosque
and I walked past the wounded. Saleh was not there. So I went inside the prayer
hall and I saw many more wounded. Salah still was not there. Finally I looked
through the rows of dead, in the area where the imam stands. And Salah was
there. He was shot in the right side of the chest.

I walked all the way home [about 5
kilometers]. All I could think was how to tell my father and mother? I did not
dare go inside to talk to them. I just stood downstairs. Finally my mother saw
me, and she sensed something was wrong. She came down to me and I told her.[110]

Al-Shurmani’s mother said the family wants justice,
not just compensation:

They trapped the young people with
walls so they could not escape the assassins. And then they killed them, these
men in full bloom of youth. And then the parliament gave the members of the
former government immunity. … We want a fair trial. Compensation is
not enough.[111]

Anwar al-Maeti

When the trial for the 78 defendants in the Friday of
Dignity case opened on September 29, 2012, Abd al-Wahed al-Maeti stood in the
courthouse, holding aloft a poster of his son Anwar, fashioned from a tattered
photo mounted on the back of a cardboard box.

Anwar, 16, was the youngest of those killed in the attack.
In the photo, his face is boyish. He wears a white headscarf and an excited
grin. The protesters at Change Square named him “Shahid al-Fatih,”
the martyr who opens the door.

Anwar was shot dead as he ran toward the house of the
Mahweet governor with the first wave of protesters who tore down the wall and
tried to catch the gunmen. A bullet struck him as he opened the door to the
governor’s house and tried to enter.

The father described his son as the best student in his
class, with dreams of becoming a doctor:

He was frustrated. He felt that
under the regime it would be impossible for him to go to medical school because
that was only for those who were powerful and their friends.[112]

When the uprising began, Anwar continued his studies, but
spent afternoons and weekends at Change Square, his father said:

I tried several times to convince
my son to stay at home and not go to Change Square because it was dangerous.
His answer was, “Father, if you keep me at home and each father keeps his
children at home, then who will change our situation?”

Like many other victims’ relatives, al-Maeti said he
wanted those responsible prosecuted. Asked about the law that the parliament
passed granting immunity to former President Saleh and his aides, he said:
“It was given by those who had no right to give to those who did not
deserve to receive it.”[113]

Salim al-Harazi

Salim al-Harazi, 13, arrived at an interview with his dark
hair carefully combed, his shirt perfectly ironed, and mirrored sunglasses
covering the scars where his eyes used to be. He stepped carefully, his hand on
the shoulder of his younger brother, Saif, who guided him into the room.

Only 11 at the time he was
wounded, Salim said he could not resist joining the protesters at Change Square
for the Friday of Dignity rally. He slipped away from home the night before.

“The former president said he would protect the
protesters,” he told Human Rights Watch. “So I thought I would be
safe.”[114]

Ionia Craig, a freelance journalist, blogged about seeing
Salim with two other boys in a tent at Change Square as the bullets began to
fly:

Shielded from the brutality of what was happening just a
few feet from them by a thin white sheet of material, the boys joked and
laughed. Two of them wore plastic [construction] helmets that had been
distributed around the protest camp as protection from flying rocks, which had
become a common weapon in the street battles of recent days.
… It was glaringly obvious that the now partially collapsed tent was
going to offer little protection from the AK-47 bullets flying through the air.
Unable to express my concern [in Arabic] to the giggling boys I motioned for
them to leave the tent, as I was about to. They declined.[115]

Salim did run out shortly after, but not for shelter.
“We saw the fire behind the wall. I went to see,” he told Human
Rights Watch. “We saw balatija. They threw stones at us and we
threw stones back. We saw bullets coming from behind the wall.”[116]

A bullet struck Salim below his nose, then crossed from his
right eye to his left eye. When he woke up the next day at the Science and
Technology Hospital, a private medical center in Sanaa that was treating
wounded protesters, doctors had removed both of his eyes.

Salim told Human Rights Watch that he wants to be a
religious scholar. First, he said he wants to learn to read Braille and to
receive cosmetic surgery. The Wafa Organization
to Support the Families of the Martyrs and Injured, a group that provides assistance to wounded protesters
and families of the those killed, has been helping Salim obtain basic
treatment, but neither the clinic nor Salim’s family can afford the cosmetic
surgery.

Jabir Saad Ali Jabir al-Mandaliq

Jabir Saad Ali Jabir al-Mandaliq, a 28-year-old religious scholar from
Amran, a province directly north of Sanaa, said he joined the Change Square
protests because he was unable to find work teaching the Quran.

I came to Change Square to demand
our freedom, dignity and rights. The people in my area are illiterate. They
can’t even read the Sura al-Fatiha [the opening
chapter of the Quran]. But the elite have squandered Yemen’s
wealth. That is why I was unemployed.[117]

The night before the attack, al-Mandaliq told Human Rights Watch,
rumors were rife of an impending attack. “My brother came to me and said,
‘Leave, I am afraid you might be killed.’ I said to him, ‘I
will never leave. I came on a peaceful mission for change.’”

Al-Mandaliq was shot as he pushed past the remains of the wall:

They were shooting at us directly,
some from the rooftops. I thought it was the end. I began praying to Allah,
“There is no God but God…” The next thing I knew I was shot.
The bullet entered my right side and exited the left. People I
didn’t know evacuated me in a blanket. A friend saw me and wept.

The bullet wound left Jabir paralyzed from the waist down.
Two pieces of his spinal cord were shattered and doctors removed 50 centimeters
of his small intestine. He urinates into a bag attached to his bladder by a
tube.

Al-Mandaliq would like to live in Amran, where he has family, but
he needs to be in Sanaa for medical care. He said he is in constant pain and
despairs of any improvement:

My legs are becoming so much
smaller. Some doctors tell me there is still some hope I can walk. But some
doctors tell me I can never walk again.[118]

V. State Failure to Protect

Yemeni security forces failed to protect both protesters and
local residents during the three-hour Friday of Dignity attack. Testimony and
statements from witnesses to Human Rights Watch indicate that this failure was
deliberate. Indeed, multiple witnesses said the Central Security Forces (CSF),
one of Yemen’s best trained and equipped forces, were responsible for
security in the area yet shielded the plainclothes gunmen while they shot at
protesters.[119]

Both before and at the time of the attack, ranking
authorities—including the interior minister and security chiefs—received
repeated warnings of a potential bloodbath from lower-level security officials,
protesters and local residents. Rather than send in reinforcements or attempt to
defuse the situation, the CSF withdrew from the immediate area the night before
the attack.

Once the attack began, CSF anti-riot forces took a half-hour
to reach the scene although they were stationed only about a kilometer away.
The forces that arrived were new, under-armed recruits who failed to detain
gunmen in plain sight. Instead, witnesses said, they turned their water cannon
and teargas on the protesters.

Even President Saleh
acknowledged that the security forces were not at the scene when the shooting
began. Although his aim was
undoubtedly to dismiss any police culpability for the shootings, he said during
a news conference hours after the massacre, “As for the police, they were
not present during this attack at all, and they did not fire one single shot.”[120]

Yemen’s Legal Obligations
to Protect

Under international law, states are required to protect
basic human rights. These rights include the right to life and the right to
peaceful assembly, enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR).[121]Yemen ratified the ICCPR in 1987.

Even if the gunmen were not acting on behalf of the Yemeni
government, the ICCPR still holds a state responsible for responding
appropriately and effectively to abuses committed by private actors. According
to the Human Rights Committee, the international expert body that monitors
compliance with the ICCPR, a state’s failure to ensure rights could
violate the Covenant if it were “permitting or failing to take
appropriate measures or to exercise due diligence to prevent, punish,
investigate or redress the harm caused by such acts by private persons or
entities.”[122]

The UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms
(“Basic Principles”) provide that law enforcement officials
“shall, as far as possible, apply non-violent means before resorting to
the use of force” and may use force “only if other means remain
ineffective.”[123] When
the use of force is necessary, law enforcement officials should “exercise
restraint in such use and act in proportion to the seriousness of the
offense.”[124]

The Basic Principles also place limits on the use of force
in dispersing “unlawful assemblies.”[125]
They provide that “intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made
when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.”[126]

The Basic Principles call on law enforcement officials to
“respect and protect human dignity and maintain and uphold the human
rights of all persons.”[127]
Failing to take even the most minimal steps to stop gunmen from shooting live ammunition
at protesters is contrary to the Basic Principles, which requires that law
enforcement officials fulfill their duty by “protecting all persons
against illegal acts.”[128]

Yemen’s Law on Organizing Demonstrations and Marches
of 2003 requires security forces to protect demonstrators and provide medical
care. Security forces must disperse demonstrators when crimes are being
committed and in the event of riots.[129]

Central Security Withdraws Early,
Returns Late

Brig. Gen. Yahya Saleh, the then-president’s nephew
and during the uprising the de-facto chief of the CSF, was fully aware of
repeated acts of violence around Change Square in the days preceding the Friday
of Dignity. For example, the CSF chief told a news conference the day before
the Friday of Dignity:

Residents have been upset about the
expansion of the protesters. When the new neighbors saw what the others
had suffered, they refused any expansion by the protesters, and clashes emerged
between them.[130]

Abd al-Rahman Hanash, then the police chief for Sanaa, told
prosecutors after the attack that he had alerted then-Interior Minister Mutahar
al-Masri, who ostensibly controlled the CSF and the regular police forces, to
the potential for bloodshed the night before the Friday of Dignity as well as
to the attack itself. He said al-Masri responded by saying, “ ‘I
know,’ but did not give us any orders”:

I
informed the minister of interior the night before Friday . . . about the
increasing tension and that there was a chance that protesters might march towards
Ring Road and attempt to remove the wall and that residents surely will not
allow them to do so…. Then I informed him again at approximately 10 a.m.
Friday morning, then again when the shooting began.[131]

Abd al-Rahman Hussein Shaiban, a PSO officer who lived near
the wall, also testified that he had alerted the PSO in advance to “the
wall that was being built and the problems between the neighbors and the
protesters.”[132]

Despite these warnings, the CSF anti-riot police left the
area of Change Square and the wall around midnight the night before the attack
and moved to Zubairy Bridge, an overpass above Kentucky Roundabout, about a
kilometer to the south, according to Hanash, the police chief, and other
witnesses.[133] Three
to four teams of CFS forces withdrew from the area around the wall.[134]

Once the shooting began, security officials
again alerted security authorities repeatedly, without results. Abd al-Azim
al-Haimi, a staff general of the CSF, testified that he called the CSF
commander directly:

I informed Major General Abd al-Malik
Tayeb, commander of the Central Security, that there was gunfire and civilians
being killed and injured, and he asked, “Where are you, exactly?” I
told him I was in City Mart [near the wall]. He said, “Okay,” and
he ended the call.[135]

Residents living near the wall also
contacted the security forces once the shooting began. A CSF colonel arrived
but with no backup forces, according to residentWalid
Hussein Hassan al-Nimri, who is a defendant in the case:

We contacted Central
Security to request protection and anti-riot police; they responded by telling
us that Central Security Forces are on their way to the area. A colonel
in a Central Security uniform arrived on an expensive white motorcycle with a
police license plate. We asked him, “Where are the Central Security
Forces?” He said, “They are on their way.” He remained
on the phone. They did not arrive until a half-hour after shooting
started.”[136]

The dozens of CSF anti-riot police who finally arrived were
armed only with batons, tear gas and water cannons.[137]
“They sent two truckloads of new troops without weapons. They were simple
soldiers,” Muhammad Hizam al-Radai, a lieutenant colonel in CSF, told
prosecutors.[138]

No Action to Stop Shooters

Once they arrived, the CSF contingents took no action
against the shooters and in some cases even shielded them as they continued to
fire at the protesters.

“Karama Has No Walls,” a documentary about the
Friday of Dignity attack, shows a line of CSF anti-riot police blocking Ring
Road amid the sound of gunfire. The CSF members are shown spraying protesters
with water cannons, while making no attempt to disarm or apprehend a group of
gunmen standing close by in a doorway.[139]

Witness statements corroborate the video footage:

“I saw two gunmen shoot and then retreat through the
line of security forces,” said rights activist al-Faqih.
“There were about 30 to 40 Central Security Force members. They were just
standing there with the gunmen nearby.”[140]

Salim al-Aulaqi told Human Rights Watch that he recalled
seeing “tens of Central Security forces mixed in with the balatija.”[141]

Yasir Muhammad Muqbil Esa, a wounded protester, testified
that:

There were militants in
plainclothes firing at us from the vicinity of the Central Security Forces and
when we approached them the soldiers made a security belt around them. …
They were pointing to the plainclothes militants to come back and fire at us.[142]

Some witnesses said they thought the liquid fired from the
water cannon was wastewater. “It must have been sewage water or
something,” said Yusef Muhammad Mohsen, a 19-year-old protester.
“It smelled very bad.”[143]

There were security forces on one
side of the street and balatija on the other. We started throwing stones
at the security forces because they were acting like shields for the killers.[144]

Even as they fired water cannon, security forces made no
effort to create an exit to disperse the protesters, as required under
Yemen’s law on demonstrations. Many other walls that had been built in
the area remained intact and armed men were blocking many side streets,
effectively trapping the protesters in a corridor of Ring Road, between the
security forces to the south and the tightly-packed mass of thousands of
additional protesters that stretched to the center of Change Square to the
north.

Hours after the shooting ended, at least
seven or eight armed men remained in plain site near the area of the attack,
but no security forces were present, reporter Kasinof, who returned the
scene at that time, told Human Rights Watch.[145]

Poor Response of Regular Police

The General Security forces, which serve as
the regular police and had a precinct house just two blocks south of the wall,
also failed to respond to the attack.

Defendant Muhammad Badr, a resident of the
area near the wall, testified that the night before the attack, he had warned Ahmad
al-Tahiri, the deputy manager of General Security for western Sanaa, that
“the situation would require anti-riot forces, but they didn’t take
any action.”[146]

When the attack began, Badr said, he
“repeatedly called” al-Tahiri to “send more forces.”
Rather than send police to the scene, al-Tahiri ordered Badr to come to see him
and, in the presence of several plainclothes officers, asked if he knew the
identities of the masked gunmen, Badr said.[147]

Badr said he also contacted Muhammad Rifaat,
an assistant director of General Security. He said Rifaat replied that the
residents should fend for themselves:

I told him [Rifaat], “The gunfire is increasing, so why
don’t you send any support?” He said, “We know. And nothing
will happen to you. Just take care of your neighborhood.”[148]

Some witnesses said that even the few General Security
officers in the area failed to intervene. “We ran to police and told them
that there were balatija shooting at us,” protester Ahmad Ahmad
told journalist Jeb Boone, who was at the scene. “They told us it wasn't
their duty to stop them.”[149]

Shaiban, the PSO officer, testified that he saw three
security force officers whom he knew at the scene of the attack as the incident
began. But, he said, as soon as they saw protesters with rocks heading in their
direction, “the security men ran away.”[150]

When prosecutors asked then-General Security Chief Hanash
why he did not dispatch his own forces, he replied that Interior Minister
al-Masri had told him that security in that area was “under the
jurisdiction of the Central Security.”[151]

“We do not have the means to protect this area,”
Hanash testified, and “we have no authority to enter it.”[152]

Central Security Chief Denies
Wrongdoing

In an interview with Human Rights Watch, Brigadier General
Saleh, at that time the CSF chief and a nephew of then-President Saleh,
said that he sent in forces “as soon as we learned about the
clashes” but that they were out-armed. He also accused the protesters of
shooting live ammunition:

There was no failure here. … The Central Security Forces were doing
everything they could do stop the fighting. But when they saw the protesters
shooting as well as the [gunmen on the] other side [of the wall], they realized
they were the only party without guns and they withdrew.

How
can unarmed forces stop gunmen? They had only batons… and water cannon.[153]

He did not explain why he did not send in reinforcements who
were better trained or better armed.

VI. Flawed Investigation

The state prosecution’s investigation into the Friday
of Dignity massacre was marred by political interference, a failure to follow
leads that might have implicated government officials, and factual errors. That
investigation became the basis for a trial into the killings that began
September 29, 2012, in the First Instance Court for the Western Capital
District in Sanaa.

President Saleh dismissed Attorney General Abdullah al-Ulofy
shortly after al-Ulofy demanded the arrests of key suspects, including
government officials. Prosecutors failed to question—much less
charge—top officials whom multiple witnesses implicated in the attack, or
security chiefs such as Brig. Gen. Yahya Saleh, until December 2012 the
de-facto leader of the CSF, whose anti-riot unit failed to properly respond to
the attack.

Of 78 suspects named as defendants in the prosecution’s
June 29, 2011 indictment, 34 are listed by the court as fugitives from justice,
including all the alleged masterminds. Lawyers for the victims allege that the whereabouts
of many of the missing defendants are known and that the authorities have made
no serious effort to find them.[154]
The victims’ lawyers also allege that nearly all of the eight defendants
who are detained were bystanders, peripheral accomplices or even, in one
instance, a case of mistaken identity.[155]

The indictment does not specify how many of the defendants
are security or government officials, or from which units or agencies. Lawyers
for the victims allege the vast majority of those considered fugitives are
security or government officials, or members of former president Saleh’s
GPC.[156]

Even Justice Minister Mushid al-Arshani said on the first
anniversary of the attack that “the real perpetrators escaped and only
their accomplices and supporters are in jail.”[157]

In an interview with Human Rights Watch, replacement
Attorney General Ali Ahmad Nasser al-Awash, who retained his post under
President Hadi, denied that his office or others in the Saleh government
interfered in the case. “We moved forward with the investigations
as best we could,” al-Awash said.[158]

The attorney general blamed any weakness in the case on
“the refusal of witnesses and victims’ relatives to cooperate with
the investigation,” and on General al-Ahmar, the commander of the First
Armored Division, who he said “may” not have turned over all
weapons or other evidence that the protesters confiscated after they tore down
the wall.[159]
General al-Ahmar, in a separate interview with Human Rights Watch, denied any
interference.[160]

Al-Awash acknowledged that the suspects included security
force members and government officials but said he did not know how many,
telling Human Rights Watch: “As the attorney general I do not go into the
details of this case.”[161]

The families began supporting the proceedings in September
2012, after their lawyers prepared a motion that called on the court to order
the Public Prosecution to reopen the investigation and indict top officials
including former president Saleh, as described later in this report.

However, that motion had its own flaw: it included as an
attachment a memo allegedly from the Interior Ministry implicating top
government officials in arming loyalists around the time that armed groups
began attacking protesters. However a separate court, the Specialized Media
Court, had five months earlier ruled that the memo was fraudulent.[162]
The motion did not note the controversy surrounding the document’s
authenticity.

The alleged memo, dated February 5, 2011 and purporting to
be from Interior Minister al-Masri to Brig. Gen. Tariq Saleh, who at that time commanded
the Presidential Guard, asked the Presidential Guard commander to approve a
list of people who would be “in charge of distributing weapons” to
Saleh loyalists.[163]

Political Interference

President Saleh fired Attorney General al-Ulofy in April
2011 after it became apparent that the attorney general was actively
investigating the Friday of Dignity case.

Though regarded as a Saleh loyalist, al-Ulofy had asserted
his independence regarding the protests and the investigation into the case in
the weeks before his dismissal. On February 24, for example, al-Ulofy called on
security forces to protect protesters participating in peaceful rallies.[164]

On March 23, after state-run Yemen TV reported that al-Ulofy
accused the political opposition of responsibility for the Friday of Dignity
attacks, al-Ulofy in a phone call to Change Square publicly denied the report.[165]

On March 26, the opposition Ain News website posted an
undated document bearing President Saleh’s signature and the presidential
seal, in which the president barred interrogation of Mahweet Governor Ahmad
al-Ahwal, as well as one of his sons and his guards, in connection with the
attack.[166] As noted
previously, gunmen used al-Ahwal’s house as the key staging area, and the
governor’s two sons, both ranking security officials, are the top two
defendants in the killings.

The memo, addressed to then-Interior Minister al-Masri,
stated:

There will be no interrogation of Ahmad
Ali Mohsen al-Ahwal, his son, or his guards. Any orders by the attorney
general against them are to be frozen. There is no objection to detaining
other suspects in the case and referring them to the prosecution.[167]

Alleged memo from President Saleh ordering
no questioning of the Mahweet Governor Ahmad al-Ahwal, his son, or his
bodyguards, that was posed on Ain News.

The Saleh government never denied issuing the memo. A
spokesman for the current Yemeni government emailed Human Rights Watch that it
was unable to confirm or deny the memo’s authenticity, and added that a national
commission of inquiry was “crucial to sort the facts from the
lies.”[168]

On April 3, al-Ulofy called the state of emergency that
Saleh had declared immediately after the attack “unconstitutional.”[169]

On April 13, al-Ulofy threatened to resign if the Interior
Ministry did not question and arrest top suspects, including government
officials, according to opposition media and lawyers for the victims.[170]

Two
weeks later, on April 28, President Saleh fired al-Ulofy and replaced him with
al-Awash.[171]

Allegations of False Testimony

Prosecutors tried in some cases to change testimony or
threatened to charge witnesses as suspects if they did not adapt their
testimony to the prosecution’s version of events, defendants’ lawyers
said.[172]

Elham Sharaf Abu Taleb, the mother of suspect Ayman Yahya
Badr, 19, said that when she went to the prosecutor’s office to inquire
about her son, an official there asked her to place her fingerprint on a piece
of paper to help gain her boy’s release.

“The prosecutor . . . asked me to put my fingerprint
on a paper and said this will help free my son, so I did,” she told Human
Rights Watch. “I still don’t know what was on that paper because I
can’t read or write.”[173]

Later, Taleb said, she learned that the paper was testimony
falsely stating that she had seen another suspect, Basem Abd al-Ghani Muhammad Hamoud
al-Harethi, a member of a prominent family, heading toward the wall on the day
of the attack with a gun.

“I have never seen him holding a weapon,” Taleb
said. “He was standing right around the corner with my sons and others
near the qat market, that’s all.”[174]

Muhammad al-Bawraki, a
defendant released on guarantee—a form
of bail in Yemen in which an influential person, such as a relative, tribesman
or businessman, takes responsibility for a suspect pending the outcome of a
case—told Yemen news media
that prosecutors jailed him for refusing to testify against people whom he did
not know. The media quoted al-Bawraki as saying that one district attorney “told
me I have to testify against those people if I want to be released. When I
refused, he sent me to prison for four months.”[175]

Failure to Question Top Officials

As detailed above, the testimony gathered by the prosecution
included dozens of eyewitness allegations that security chiefs and other
government officials played a role in planning and carrying out the Friday of
Dignity killings. Yet the prosecutors did not call in most of the top-ranking
government officials named by these witnesses for questioning.

For example, prosecutors did not question Brig. Gen. Yahya
Saleh, the former CSF chief-of-staff, or then-interior minister al-Masri,
ostensibly his supervisor, about the withdrawal of CSF forces from the area
around the wall the night before the attack, and their insufficient response
once the shootings began.

Nor did they question Farwan, the head of Judicial
Inspection Authority at the time of the attack, and other officials who
witnesses said were involved in planning the formation of armed neighborhood
committees near the wall.[176]

The prosecutors also did not question al-Ahwal, governor of
Mahweet, whose house was the main staging area for gunmen as they fired on
protesters and whose sons Ali and Ghazi were indicted for shooting at protesters.
Governor al-Ahwal was on the original list of 127 suspects but prosecutors
dropped him from the indictment, citing “lack of evidence.”[177]

Mahweet residents protested his continued tenure and the
Mahweet governorate council on May 1, 2011 approved a resolution seeking his
removal because of his alleged role in the killings.[178]
At this writing, the governor remained in his post.

Prosecutors also did not question General al-Ahmar, the
commander of the First Armored Division, whom they accuse of failing to deliver
all suspects captured on the day of the attack to the prosecution.[179]
Nor did they question Major al-Mikhlafi from the First Armored Division, whom
prosecutors originally listed as a suspect but never indicted. In testimony to
prosecutors, witnesses had alleged al-Mikhlafi led a group of plainclothes
gunmen who were firing from the rooftop of a honey store near the wall.[180]

The failure to question key officials was not for lack of
time. Prosecutors handed up their indictment after only three months—one-half
the six months allowed by law to complete their investigation.

Primary Suspects Remain at Large

Only 8 of the 78 suspects in the Friday of Dignity Massacre
were in custody at this writing. Most of the eight were menial workers,
security guards, or students.[181] Lawyers
for the victims allege that the detained defendants are scapegoats who are
either innocent or played at most a peripheral role, and who remain jailed
simply because they lack political clout.

The indictment listed 31 defendants, including ranking
security officials alleged by prosecutors to have played a key role in the
attack, as fugitives from justice who had never been apprehended. Nearly
all of those 31 are among 52 suspects indicted on the most serious charge,
firing gunshots with intent to kill. Criminal trials conducted in
absentia generally violate the right of a defendant to present an adequate
defense and to contest the evidence and witnesses. Exceptions would include
cases in which the defendant absconded after the proceedings had begun.[182]

Another 39 defendants were freed on their own recognizance
or on guarantee.[183] Twelve
of those freed defendants also were missing at this writing; despite repeated
orders from the trial judge for the authorities to locate all defendants and
ensure they attend court proceedings, only 27 of those not being detained
appeared at the last session, on November 28, 2012.

The eight jailed defendants have attended most trial
hearings, where they are held in a cage as is traditional during Yemeni trials
for serious crimes. At the trial opening on September 29, 2012, the detained
defendants rattled the bars of their cage and shouted, “Let us out! The
innocent are jailed and the guilty are free!”[184]

The jailed defendants included a homeless man with severe
vision impairments and a disoriented appearance who insisted his name is
Muammar Ali Hussein al-Hout—not Muammar Nagi Ali al-Hout, the name that
appears on the indictment. Al-Hout is charged as one of the shooters in the
attack.

During a
jailhouse interview with Human Rights Watch, al-Hout, who has been detained
since July 2011, freely admitted he had been living in a tent in Tahrir Square,
the encampment in Sanaa for pro-Saleh protesters. He said he initially had been
jailed for drinking and stabbing a man who tried to steal his money and
cellphone.[185]

When al-Hout was brought
to court weeks later for what he thought would be a sentence of 80 lashes for
that incident, the judge unexpectedly returned him to jail as one of the shooters,
al-Hout said. Two lawyers who are representing al-Hout without charge confirmed
this version of events to Human Rights Watch.[186]

Al-Hout said he lacks identification papers to
prove his identity—a common problem in Yemen:

I have never been
to Change Square. I even cried in court and broke down. I was really shocked. I
know it is hard to believe that a man like me is innocent because of how I
look, but I swear I am a very simple guy and my only problem is drinking. I
have never held a gun in my whole life.[187]

In September, a judge ruled that
al-Hout could be released if he can prove his identity, but al-Hout said that
he is estranged from his family and “I don’t know anybody who can
come identify me.”[188]

Another jailed suspect is a detained 65-year-old garbage collector, Khaled Said
Ahmad Batarfi, who prosecutors say helped set
fire to the wall where the protesters were shot. In two interviews with Human
Rights Watch in September 2012, the first in a prison and the second one from
his courtroom cage, Batarfi was often incoherent, contradicted himself
and appeared disoriented. [189]

At this writing, Batarfi was being
detained in the military prison although he had no role in the armed
forces.

During the September 29 hearing,
Judge Abulwali al-Shabani reminded Batarfi that he had granted him release on
guarantee in July. “But I can’t find a guarantor!” Batarfi
cried. He told Human Rights Watch he had no way to contact his relatives
to assist him because the authorities confiscated his cellphone, glasses and
identity card during his arrest and never returned them.

One suspect, driver Saleh al-Jibri, testified that
neighborhood leader Aqil al-Bawni and local resident Walid Hussein Hassan al-Nimri,
who is charged with shooting with intent to kill, paid him 1,000 Yemeni Rials
(US$46) to drive them to obtain materials to burn tires at the wall.[190]
Al-Jibri was charged as an accomplice, while al-Bawni was not charged at all.

Another detained suspect, Muhammad
Ahsan Ali Zait, a 27-year-old accountant, told Human Rights Watch that
protesters seized him while he stood in the doorway of a pharmacy where he
worked in the Duba commercial center, one of the buildings from which gunmen
shot at protesters.

Speaking from the cage in the
courtroom, Zait said that he was at the pharmacy and went to the door and began
filming with his camera once he heard sounds of the attack:

Protesters grabbed me and stabbed
me in the back and legs and they tried to cut my throat with a jambiyya
[a traditional Yemeni dagger that men commonly wear in their belts]. I was
charged with firing at the protesters with an AK-47. But all I had was a camera
and a laptop.[191]

Further Errors in Probe

Human Rights Watch has
additional concerns about the authorities’ handling of the case:

Several defendants were initially
questioned as witnesses and subsequently received notice that they had been
indicted only on the day they were charged, their lawyers said. The Yemeni
legal system requires prosecutors to give suspects an opportunity to rebut
charges before they are formally indicted.[192]

Based on the written testimony
that the Public Prosecution filed with the court as part of its indictment, it
appears that prosecutors questioned many suspects and witnesses without
verifying their identities.

Prosecutors indicted many
suspects on the basis of testimony that they carried weapons, although many men
in Yemen own and use guns, including assault rifles such as Kalashnikovs.

Defendants’ lawyers showed
Human Rights Watch numerous factual errors in the indictment files, some of
them substantive. Many names of witnesses or suspects are incomplete or
incorrect, including the name of one of the top defendants, the Mahweet
governor’s son Ghazi Ahmad Ali Mohsen al-Ahwal. Instead, the charge sheet
lists a similar name that the defendants’ lawyers say is that of Ghazi
al-Ahwal’s 10-year-old son.[193]

The list of
127 wounded includes at least four people who testified that they were not
wounded on that day but during other attacks on protesters.[194]Five other wounded appear to be listed at least twice but
with slight variations to their names.[195]

A motion filed by lawyers for the
defendants alleging that the final page of testimony was fraudulently inserted was
pending at this writing in a Sanaa appeals court.[196]

VII. Steps Toward Accountability

Yemen has an obligation under international law to investigate
and appropriately prosecute serious violations of human rights. The UN Human
Rights Committee, the international expert body that monitors compliance with
the ICCPR, has stated that where serious rights violations have occurred,
governments “must ensure that
those responsible are brought to justice. As with failure to investigate,
failure to bring to justice perpetrators of such violations could in and of
itself give rise to a separate breach of the Covenant.”[197]While there are particular complications involved in providing
accountability for the Friday of Dignity attack and other human rights
violations in Yemen, legal avenues do exist for bringing those responsible to
justice.

One major obstacle to prosecutions is the immunity law that
Yemen’s parliament passed in January 2012 in exchange for then-President
Saleh’s resignation. The law grants the former president complete
immunity and all those who served with him immunity from prosecution for any
crimes, except terrorist acts, committed in the course of their duties during
his 33-year rule.[198] Even
if the court presiding over the trial of those allegedly responsible for the
Friday of Dignity attack were to order a new investigation that led to the
indictment of additional government officials, these officials would likely
seek to use the immunity law to challenge their prosecution.

The grant of immunity runs counter to Yemen’s
obligations under international law.[199]
The UN secretary-general has opposed amnesties for recognized international
crimes.[200] Thus, even
though the immunity law contains a clause barring appeal or annulment, the
amnesty’s validity could be challenged in Yemeni courts.[201]

The UN Security Council and the UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights have both called for comprehensive, independent, and impartial
investigations consistent with international standards into alleged human
rights violations during Yemen’s 2011 uprising, and for “all those
responsible” to be held to account.[202] The UN
Human Rights Council also has expressed support for such investigations and has
said it will monitor Yemen’s progress in carrying them out.[203]

Indicting Ex-President Saleh and
Aides

On October 13, 2012, lawyers for Friday of Dignity victims
filed a motion in the First Instance Court for the Western Capital District
that they described as a possible first step toward challenging Yemen’s
immunity law.[204] The
motion seeks the indictment of at least 11 additional defendants for the
shootings, including former president Saleh and his nephew Gen. Brig. Yahya
Saleh, the former CSF chief.[205]

The motion asks the court to order a new investigation,
accusing the Public Prosecution of ignoring the complicity of top government
officials in the attack. It also requests an immediate travel ban on the 11
officials it wants indicted.[206]

In addition to former president Saleh and Brig. Gen. Yahya
Saleh, the motion seeks the indictments of Tariq Mohammed Abdullah Saleh,
another of the former president‘s nephews and at the time of the attack
the commander of the Presidential Guard; Maj. Gen. Abd al-Malik Tayeb, the
former CSF commander; Mutahar al-Masri, the former interior minister;
Abdullah Farwan, the former president of the Judicial Inspection Authority;
Mahweet Governor Ahmad Ali al-Ahwal; Abd al-Rahman al-Akwaa, Saleh's brother-in-law
and the former mayor of Sanaa; Ahmad Nasser, a district director in the Political
Security Organization; Abd al-Rahman al-Kuhlani, a retired army officer and GPC
council member; Muhammad Ahmad al-Claiba, an army officer; and the entire
leadership of the CSF in Sanaa and of General Security for western Sanaa.[207]

At a trial session on November 28, Judge al-Sanabani said
the motion appeared to conflict with the immunity law and sent it to the
constitutional division of the Supreme Court for guidance.[208]
The lead lawyer on the motion objected that those accused in the motion should
first file a response.[209]
As of mid-January 2013, Judge al-Sanabani had held no further proceedings in
the trial and the Supreme Court had not issued a response to the motion.

International Paths to Justice

Individuals implicated in the Friday of Dignity attack could
also be prosecuted in other countries or possibly by the International Criminal
Court (ICC). Many countries have universal jurisdiction laws that permit
prosecutions of non-nationals for crimes in violation of international law,
such as torture and crimes against humanity, that took place in another country.
The parliamentary grant of immunity has no legal effect outside of Yemen, as
acts of a foreign legislature do not bind another sovereign state.[210]

The International Criminal Court in The Hague is a possible
venue for the prosecution of Yemenis who are implicated in crimes against
humanity and war crimes.[211]
Yemen is not a member state of the Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the
ICC.[212]
However, Yemen could ratify the treaty, or accept the retroactive jurisdiction
of the ICC through a formal declaration even without becoming a state party to
the statute.[213]The
Rome Statue also empowers the UN Security Council to refer situations to the
ICC for consideration.[214]

Push for Inquiries and
Compensation

In September 2012, President Hadi signed a decree
authorizing the creation of a commission of inquiry to investigate human rights
violations during the 2011 uprising, including the Friday of Dignity attack,
and to recommend accountability measures such as prosecutions of those
responsible or compensation to victims. The decree calls for the commission to
be independent and impartial and adhere to international standards, and
authorizes it to hold government officials in contempt for refusing to
cooperate with investigations.[215]

On the eve of the first anniversary of the Friday of Dignity
shootings, President Hadi had issued a separate decree ordering the creation of
a compensation fund for victims of all attacks during the uprising. The fund is
to disperse monthly stipends equivalent to a soldier’s pay—about
20,000 Yemeni Rials, or US$93— for those severely disabled and for
families of those killed as well as medical costs at home or abroad for the
severely wounded.[216]

In November 2012, the Administrative Court of First Instance
in Sanaa ordered the government to immediately create the fund and begin
payments.[217]
But at this writing the fund still had not been created.

The government in the meantime has provided one million Yemeni Rials (US$4,672) to relatives of each person killed in the uprising, 500,000 Yemeni Rials (US$2,336) to each disabled person, and 360,000 Yemeni Rials (US$1,682) to each person requiring medical treatment, according to the Wafa Organization, which was distributing the funds. At this writing some victims were still awaiting payment. Wafa said the government gave similar sums to soldiers injured a suicide bombing in Sanaa in May 2012.[218]

If ultimately passed, a transitional justice bill stalled at
this writing in Yemen’s parliament also would authorize the creation of a
commission to investigate major human rights violations during 2011 and
possibly as far back as 1978.[219]

These commissions and funds could provide invaluable
functions of truth-finding and redress for victims—part of the range of
measures set forth by the UN in its definition of “transitional
justice.”[220] However,
neither the commission of inquiry nor the transitional justice bill would in
and of itself supersede the immunity law. As such, they should be seen as
complements to rather than substitutes for prosecutions for serious crimes.

Yemen also has allowed the UN Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights to open an office in Yemen to provide technical
assistance and report back to the commissioner on the human rights situation in
the country.[221] While
this step could help prevent future rights violations, it is also not a
substitute for prosecutions.

Fair prosecutions—whether in domestic, foreign or international
proceedings—are also important for reasons beyond a state’s
international legal obligations. Holding those responsible to account for
serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian
law may help restore dignity to victims by acknowledging their suffering.
Prosecutions also help deter a culture of impunity that encourages future
abuses.[222]

Without these steps, the changes that hundreds of Yemenis
lost their lives to achieve and that the transition government has promised
will remain incomplete.

Acknowledgments

This report was researched and written by Letta
Tayler, senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, with research assistance from several consultants.

Human Rights Watch thanks the
many witnesses, wounded, relatives of victims, human rights defenders, medical
workers, lawyers, Yemeni government officials, and other individuals whose
accounts, insights, or other assistance made this report possible. They include
Muhammad Naji Allow, Ahmad Arman, Abdulrahman Barman, Khaled al-Maweri, and
Radhia Khairan of the Organization for Defending Rights and
Freedoms (HOOD); Ismail al-Dailami of the Hemaya Organization for Human
Rights; Muhammad al-Aroosi of the Musawah Center for Development and Human
Rights; Hizam al-Moraisi; Faisal
Hazza al-Majeedi; Muhammad Mehdi al-Bakoli and Muhammad Muhammad al-Maswari of
the House of Law Organization; Shawqi al-Maimooni and the Wafa Organization to
Support the Families of the Martyrs and Injured; Sarah Jamal Ali Ahmed; Fahd
Alshohary; Abd al-Rashid al-Faqih and
Radhia al-Mutawakel of the Hewar (Dialogue) Forum; and youth activist Ibrahim
Mothana. Jeb Boone provided valuable details for a map of Change Square and the
attack area.

[1]United
Nations Development Program (UNDP), “Yemen Country
Profile,” http://www.undp.org.ye/y-profile.php (accessed
September 10, 2012).

Yemen placed 164 on Transparency
International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2011, http://www.transparency.org/cpi2011/results (accessed
January 2, 2013). Among Arab countries that experienced mass protests and
popular uprisings that year, only Libya ranked lower, coming in at number 168.

[9]
Human Rights Watch confirmed the deaths of 270 protesters and bystanders from
February through December 2011 through victims’ relatives, medical
records, or both. The actual number may be significantly higher. Human
Rights Watch has extensively documented the government’s use of excessive
force against peaceful protesters in news releases since February 2011; see
Human Rights Watch’s Yemen page: http://www.hrw.org/middle-eastn-africa/yemen.
Hospital officials and dozens of witnesses also have given Human Rights Watch
credible accounts of civilian deaths during fighting between armed factions
since the protests began. See, for example, “Yemen: Dozens of Civilians
Killed in Southern Fighting,” Human Rights Watch news release, July 9,
2011, http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/07/09/yemen-dozens-civilians-killed-southern-fighting.

[25] Testimony of Nasr al-Bawni, March 24,
2011, Interrogation File for Case No. 88 for the Year 2011 (“Prosecution
Interrogation File”), First Instance Criminal Court for the Western
Capital District, Registered as No. 454 for the Year 2011, Office of the
Specialized Appellate Criminal Prosecution for the North of
the Capital, June 29, 2011, p. 303. Copy on file with Human Rights
Watch.

[35] The incident was reported on Yemeni blogs and media and also was captured by a citizen journalist on video. See
“Saleh’s Security Thugs (Snipers) Fire at Peaceful Protesters from
Roof,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTfVQrBemkA
(accessed August 3, 2012).

[37] Testimony of Aqil al-Bawni, March 26, 2011, Prosecution
Interrogation File, pp. 309-10. Neighorhoods in Yemeni cities are governed by a
zone leader known as an “aqil al-harah.” Under President
Saleh, the zone leaders routinely were members of Saleh’s GPC party and,
according to residents, often acted as undercover security agents.

[46]Multiple witness testimonies and video footage. See also List of the Evidence for Case No. 88 for the Year 2011
(“Prosecution List of Evidence”), First Instance Criminal Court for
the Western Capital District, Registered as No. 454 for the Year 2011, Office
of Specialized Appellate Criminal Prosecution for the North of the Capital,
June 29, 2011. Copy on file with Human Rights Watch.

[53]President Saleh did not describe what
laws were suspended during the 30-day state of emergency, which he did not
renew. See news conference aired on Yemen TV with then-minister of interior Mutahar al-Masri, March 18, 2011 (Arabic), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARoXehecSMU.
See also “President announces state of
emergency, ban on carrying arms,” Saba Net, March 18, 2011, http://www.sabanews.net/en/news237944.htm (accessed November 12, 2012).

[54] Ibid. See also the interview with former President Saleh on
al-Arabiya TV, March 26, 2011, http://www.alarabiya.net/programs/2011/03/27/143142.html.

[60]Decision of Charges (“Charge Sheet”), Case No.
88 for the year 2011, First Instance Criminal Court for the Western Capital
District, Registered as No. 454 for the Year 2011, Office of Specialized
Appellate Criminal Prosecution for the North of the Capital, June 29, 2011, p.
2.

[63] Transition
President Hadi fired General Mohammed Saleh al-Ahmarr
during an attempted military restructuring in April 2012 but the
commander resisted removal for weeks; in April air force officers seized
Yemen's main airport for a day to protest his dismissal. See Mohammed Ghobari,
“Air Force Officers Ground Flights at Sanaa Airport,” April 7,
2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/07/us-yemen-airport-idUSBRE83606020120407
(accessed August 3, 2012).

[68] Karama Has No Walls, short documentary, directed by Sara
Ishaq, 2012.

[69]
The use of the governor’s house is noted throughout the
Case Description Document Review Report (“Prosecution Case
Description”), Office of Specialized Appellate Criminal Prosecution for
the North of the Capital, pp. 1-10, June 29, 2011. Copy on file with Human Rights Watch. See also
testimony of Nayef Ali Saleh al-Thabi, March 20, 2011, Prosecution
Interrogation File, p. 32.

[75] Human Rights Watch interview with Raja, Sanaa, March 22, 2012. The
slogan “The people want the downfall of the regime” (الشعب
يريد إسقاط
النظام) became a rallying cry for the protests
across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011.

[80]Page 4 of the prosecution Charge Sheet lists
43 dead based on the number of forensic examinations before burial. Lawyers for
the dead say 52 people died.

[81]Human Rights Watch interviews with
Mutahar al-Mokhtar of the Wafa Organization to Support the Families of the
Martyrs and Injured, Sanaa, December 22, 2012, and Wala’a al-Guneid, a
medic at the Change Square field hospital, June 14, 2012, among others.

[82] Human Rights Watch interview, Sanaa, June 14, 2012. The nurse
requested that she be identified only as Um Hashim.

[90] Human Rights Watch interview with Muhammad Mehdi al-Bakoli,
president of the House of Law Organization, Sanaa, April 2, 2012. OHL represents several defendants linked to former president
Saleh in other cases. Many lawyers for the victims’ families and the
Change Square legal committee are in turn affiliated with the opposition Islah
party.

[92] On April 6, 2011, for example, Abd al-Raqib al-Hamiri, a prosecutor in the case, issued a memo listing 14 detained suspects.
His memo is attached to the news report “The FAD publishes names of
suspects in the murder of worshipers in Change Square in Sanaa,”
Ekhbariya.net, March 19, 2012, http://www.ekhbariyah.com/local-yemen/articles27431.html (accessed September 8, 2012). See also “First Armored Division: We received orders from the attorney
general to hand over the suspects to the Public Prosecution Office,” Mareb Press, March 19, 2011, http://marebpress.net/news_details.php?lng=arabic&sid=41710.

[94] Muhammad Muhammad al-Maswari, secretary-general of the OHL,
repeated the allegations November 10, 2012, on the talk show (“We
Disagree and Agree”) on Yemen Today, a TV channel owned by former
president Saleh’s son Ahmad Ali Saleh, the commander of the Republican
Guard. Faisal Hazza al-Majeedi, another lawyer for the victims who appeared
with al-Maswari on “Nakhtalif Wa Natafiq,” labeled the accusations
“baseless” and “absolute nonsense.” “Nakhtalif Wa
Natafiq,” Yemen Today TV channel, November 10, 2012.

[95] Testimony of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan Daba’a, March 19,
2011, Prosecution Interrogation File, p. 7.Another
witness testified that a member of the al-Ahwal family whom he named as Ahmad
al-Ahwal—the name of the governor—escaped by car from the al-Alwal
house near the shootings. However, in the same testimony the witness made clear
references to the governor’s son Ali Ahmad al-Ahwal—describing him
as a man in his 30s and as the Central Intelligence Division chief—using
the name of the governor, making it uncertain if he was referring to the father
or the son. See testimony of Abdu Rabu Ahmad al-Roqabi, Prosecution
Interrogation File, p. 592.

[105] Committee to Protect Journalists, Journalists Killed: Yemen, Jamal al-Sharaabi, March 18, 2011, http://cpj.org/killed/2011/jamal-al-sharaabi.php
(accessed November 20, 2012). Al-Sharaabi, who was
shot in the face, was a well-known journalist with the opposition newspaper
al-Masdar.

[106]Human
Rights Watch interview with Mutahar al-Mokhtar of the Wafa Organization to
Support the Families of the Martyrs and Injured, Sanaa, December 22, 2012.

[119] A 1980 presidential order established Central Security (al-Amn
al-Markazi), tasking the agency with responsibilities ranging from ensuring the
safety of property and persons to border patrolling and counterterrorism.
Central Security has been implicated in using excessive force against largely
peaceful protesters in various parts of Yemen including Sanaa and Aden, as well
as against members of the Southern Movement, a broad coalition of groups
seeking greater autonomy for the former republic of South Yemen. Central
Security includes a Counter-Terrorism Unit that has
been funded and trained by the US. See Congressional Research Service,
“Yemen: Background and U.S. Relations,” November 1, 2012, www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL34170.pdf
(accessed November 15,
2012), p. 14.

Regarding peaceful assembly, Article
21 states that: “No restrictions may be placed on the exercise of this
right other than those imposed in conformity with the law and which are
necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or
public safety, public order (ordre publique), the protection of public health
or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.” http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htm
(accessed November 16, 2012).

[122]Human Rights Committee, General Comment 31, Nature of the
General Legal Obligation on States Parties to the Covenant, U.N. Doc.
CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.13 (2004), para. 8.

[123]Basic Principles on the Use of
Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, adopted by
the Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment
of Offenders, Havana, 27 August to 7 September 1990, U.N. Doc.
A/CONF.144/28/Rev.1 at 112 (1990), http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/codeofconduct.htm
(accessed November 16, 2012), principle 4.

[129] Republican Decision of Law 29 for the Year 2003, Regarding the
Organization of Demonstration sand Marches, arts. 6, 8 and 9.

[130] Speech by Brig. Gen. Yahya Saleh at a conference broadcasted by Nabanews, March 17, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wax_fo4OWoU&feature=related. Brigadier General Saleh was at the time of the attack the chief of staff of the CSF and its
de-facto commander. President Hadi appointed a more assertive CSF commander,
Major General Fadhl al-Qawsi on May 21, 2012, and removed Gen. Saleh
from the CSF in December 2012.

[142] Testimony of Yasser Muhammad Moqbil Esa, Prosecution Interrogation
File, p. 85. Al-Mutawakel, the carpenter who
worked at a store near the wall, testified that he also saw the security forces
fail to stop a shooter who would “stand near the
security personnel then would go to the front, shoot in the direction of
protesters and return to the back:” Prosecution Interrogation File, p.
333.

[143] Human Rights Watch interview with Yusif Muhammad Mohsen, Sanaa,
June 14, 2012. Protesters and Yemeni human rights defenders have made repeated
allegations to Human Rights Watch of security forces using sewage in water
cannons fired at protests during the 2011 uprising. See also UN Office of the
High Commissioner on Human Rights, Report of the
High Commissioner on OHCHR’svisit to Yemen, A/HRC/18/21, September 13, 2011, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/category,COI,OHCHR,,,4e76ecdb2,0.html (accessed September 8, 2012), p. 7.

[162]The Specialized
Media Court on May 14, 2012 issued a verdict that the document was fake on May
14, 2012, according to a statement from the OHL lawyers in the Friday of
Dignity case. The court has a record of political decision-making but Human
Rights Watch did not monitor the proceedings in the case of this memo and
cannot comment on the ruling.

[163]Request to Address the Court to File Criminal Charges against
Those Not Covered by the Indictment, according to article (32) a. c.
(“Motion for Additional Indictments”), submitted October 13, 2012,
to Motion for Additional Indictments, p. 27. The opposition newspaper
Mareb Press had published the memo in April
2011 but issued a retraction and an apology the following month, saying the
Interior Ministry had provided it with an official, unrelated document bearing
the same identification number as al-Masri’s alleged memo, but dated
March 11, 2011. See “Interior denies the validity of the note . . . and
confirms it was a forgery” (Arabic), Marebpress.net, May 5, 2011, http://marebpress.net/news_details.php?sid=33640&lng=arabic
(accessed November 24, 2012).

[176] Victims’ lawyers noted the exclusion of witnesses in theirMotion for Additional Indictments of
October 13, 2012, asking the judge to order the Public Prosecution
to reopen the investigation.

[177]Prosecution Decision to Temporarily Dismiss Charges for
Insufficient Evidence/Lack of Identification Verification (“Decision to
Dismiss”), Case no. 88, 2011, First Instance Court for the Western
Capital District, registry No. 454 for the year 2011, document of the Court of
Appeals of Northern Sanaa, June 29, 2011.

[183] International law encourages defendants to be released pending
trial except where there is a likelihood that the defendant will
abscond, destroy evidence or influence witnesses. See
ICCPR, art. 9(3) (“It shall not be the general rule that persons awaiting
trial shall be detained in custody, but release may be subject to guarantees to
appear for trial.”); see also, Human Rights Committee, General Comment
No. 8, Right to Liberty Security of the Person; Human Rights Committee, Hill
v. Spain, No. 526/1993, sec. 12.3.

[184] Human Rights Watch attended the trial sessions through
November 28, 2012, the last proceeding before this report was published.

[199]The trend in international law is that state amnesty
provisions must be considered void if they attempt to amnesty serious crimes in
violation of international law, because such provisions are contrary to
states’ obligations to combat impunity for serious violations of
international human rights and humanitarian law. Many precedents were set in
Latin America. For example, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has held
that Peru’s blanket amnesty law, which discouraged investigations and
denied any remedies to victims, was invalid. See Inter-American Court, Barrios
Altos Case, judgment of March 14, 2001, Inter-Am. Ct. H.R., (Ser. C) No. 75
(2001), paras. 41-44. The Inter-American Court also held that Brazil’s
amnesty law is “incompatible with the American Convention [on Human
Rights] and void of any legal effects.” See Inter-American Court,
Gomes-Lund et al. (Guerrilha do Araguaia) v. Brazil, November 24, 2010,http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4d469fa92.html.
Similarly, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has found that amnesty
laws in Chile and Argentina do not satisfy a state’s duty to prosecute
and are incompatible with the American Convention on Human Rights. See
Inter-American Court, Garay Hermosilla Case, Case 10. 843, Report No. 36/96,
Inter Am.Ct.H.R.,OEA/Ser.L/V/II.95 Doc. 7 rev. at 156 (1997), October 15, 1996,
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6b71a4.html; Inter- American Court,
Case Nos. 10.147, 10.181, 10.240, 10.262, 10.309, 10.311, Report No. 28/92,
Inter-Am.C.H.R., OEA/Ser.L/V/II.83 Doc. 14 at 41 (1993), October 2, 1992,
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6b6d434.html (all accessed December 30,
2011). Article 4 of Yemen’s immunity law of 2012 bars appeal or annulment.

[200]The
UN’s Rule-Of-Law Tools for Post-Conflict States state that “United
Nations staff, whether in Headquarters or in field operations, may never
condone amnesties that international law and United Nations policy unite in
condemning.” See Office of The United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights, “Rule-Of-Law Tools For Post-Conflict States: Amnesties,”
HR/PUB/09/1, 2009,http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/Amnesties_en.pdf (accessed
December 13, 2011).

In 2004, then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan wrote in
his report on the rule of law and transitional justice in conflict and
post-conflict societies that “United Nations-endorsed peace agreements
can never promise amnesties for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity
or gross violations of human rights.” See Report of the
Secretary-General, “The rule of law and transitional justice in conflict
and post-conflict societies,” S/2004/616, August 24, 2004, http://www.unrol.org/files/2004%20report.pdf
(accessed January 25, 2013), para. 10.

Jamal Benomar, a special advisor to UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, informed all parties of that policy while
facilitating President Saleh’s November 23 agreement to transfer power.
See First Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to Security Council Resolution
2014 (2011), November 28, 2011, para. 12 (copy on file with Human Rights
Watch).

[201] Yemen’s Constitution authorizes
the Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of laws. Article 51 says
Yemenis can go to court to “protect their rights and lawful interests.”
Article 153 of the Constitution empowers the Supreme Court to strike down
unconstitutional laws.

[210]For example, an amnesty passed in
the state where the crime was committed has been held not to bind courts in the
United Kingdom, which have the discretion not to apply the amnesty law to
crimes that, through treaties (such as the Convention against Torture), the UK
government has committed itself to prosecuting. See the reasoning of Lords
Steyn and Nichols in R v. Bow Street Magistrates Court; ex parte Pinochet (No
1), (25 Nov. 1998), [1998] 4 All ER 897 at 938 (Lord Nicholls) and 946-7 (Lord
Steyn). In France, the French Supreme Court held that a foreign amnesty law has
effect only in the territory of the state concerned, and that recognizing the
applicability of a foreign amnesty law in France would be tantamount to a
violation by the French national authorities of their international
obligations, and to a negation of the principle and purpose of universal
jurisdiction. See Cour de Cassation, decision N° de pourvoi : 02-85379,
October 23, 2002, in the case against Mauritanian national Ely Ould Dah,
available online at http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/.

[211]The ICC was established to deliver justice for serious
violations of international criminal, such as war crimes and crimes against
humanity, where national courts are unwilling or unable genuinely to
investigate or prosecute. See Rome Statute, arts. 12-13. The Rome Statute
defines crimes against humanity as one of a number of criminal acts, including
murder, “when committed as part of a widespread or
systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of
the attack.” Ibid. art. 7.

[212]Yemen signed the Rome Statute on December 28, 2000, but has
not ratified the treaty.

[218]Human Rights Watch interviews in Sanaa with Shawqi al-
Maimooni, president of the Wafa Organization, December 11, 2012, andAbdu Wasel, executive director of the Wafa
Organization, January 23, 2013.

[219]Yemeni cabinet members and members of Parliament are
divided over whether the law should apply to violations since the formation of
the republic in 1978, the 2011 uprising, or a date in between.See “[Prime Minister Muhammad] Basindwa
entrusted with resolving crisis on Transitional Justice Act,” al-Masdar
(Arabic), http://almasdaronline.com/article/40244
(accessed January 10, 2013).

[220]Report of the Secretary-General, The rule of law and
transitional justice in conflict and post-conflict societies, S/2004/616,
August 24, 2004.

[221]Technical Assistance and Capacity-Building for Yemen in the
Field of Human Rights, Human Rights Council resolution 19/29,
adopted March 23, 2012, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/A_67_53_en.pdf,
and resolution 21/22, adopted on September 27, 2012, http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/E/HRC/d_res_dec/A_HRC_21_L30.doc.